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Beside the inability to produce superoxide ions, neutrophils (PMN) from chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) patients show other functional defects, e.g. abnormal membrane potential reactions. We observed that PMN from a female CGD carrier, with a discrete mutation in one allele of the pg91phox gene and exhibiting extreme lyonization, showed a consistently and remarkably delayed PMN cytosolic calcium response to the tripeptide fMLP or leukotriene B4 (LTB4). In keeping with results from other CGD patients, membrane potential changes were abnormal, whereas chemotaxis and adherence was normal. Since phospholipase D-generated metabolites are important for calcium transients we examined the generation of phosphatidic acid, but found that to be normal. A male CGD patient with pg91phox deficiency exhibited a trend toward prolongation of this calcium response, whereas two other CGD patients (one with p47 and one with 67phox deficiencies) had normal calcium transients. Thus, our finding points to a defect of the stimulus response coupling for fMLP and LTB4, which is supposed to be characteristic for this patient or a subset of CGD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]