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Abstract
TB remains a major health problem, with two million deaths and eight million new cases annually. Two billion people are infected with the etiological agent, MTB. Of these, fewer than 10% ever develop disease, although the pathogen is not eradicated but rather contained in discrete lesions. Hence, the immune system is highly effective in containing the pathogen, but fails to eradicate it. Disease typically develops through reactivation once the immune system is weakened. The immune response toMTB is T cell dependent. The immune mechanisms known to have a role in acquired resistance can be associated with two major mechanisms:a) activation of macrophages by cytokines; (b) direct cytolytic activity (Kaufmann, 2002).The purposes of this work were to estimate the percent of monocytes expressing intracellular IL-12 among the four studied groups in response to stimulation with UCF, to estimate the percent of T, NK and NKT cells among the different groups ,to correlate these parameters with the different factors affecting disease outcomes and to evaluate the flowcytometry using whole blood as a technique used for detection of the percent of monocytes expressing intracellular IL-12.The present study was carried out on 22 patients recruited from Chest Hospital in Menoufiya governorate during the period from January 2003 to January 2004. All patients were diagnosed as active pulmonary TB based on the presence of recent clinical symptoms of TB, positive smears for acid-fast bacilli from sputum, positive culture for TB on L.J.