Primary Sjogren's Syndrome (SS) is an autoimmune disease characterized by dry eyes and dry mouth due to lymphocytic infiltration of lacrimal and salivary glands. Biopsies of their salivary glands provided an opportunity to characterize the phenotypic and functional properties of inflammatory site lymphocytes. We found that the salivary gland lymphocytes (SGL) of SS patients differed from the peripheral blood lymphocytes of the same patients because: a) SGL lacked lymphocytes reactive with anti-Leu-7 and anti-Leu-11 monoclonal antibodies; b) SGL lacked natural killer (NK) activity; and c) SGL lacked the ability to suppress polyclonal B cell responses in the presence of complement fragment C3a, a function that requires the presence of Leu-7+ cells. These studies also showed that the SGL of SS patients differed from tonsillar lymph node (LN) lymphocytes of immunologically normal individuals because tonsillar LN contained Leu-7+ T cells, and tonsillar LN could suppress polyclonal B cell responses in the presence of the complement fragment C3a. The absence of this regulatory subset in the salivary glands of SS patients may contribute to pathogenesis, because these cells may be important in the suppression of polyclonal antibody synthesis and in the elimination of neoplastic or viral infected cells.