Recently, increasing attention has been paid to thymic relevance to pathogenesis in some autoimmune diseases. In this report, the thymus cells from 7 patients with myasthenia gravis (MG) and 6 patients with ulcerative colitis (UC), who had undergone thymectomy for complication of thymic hyperplasia, were studied. The thymus cells were characterized with monoclonal antibodies (Anti-Leu-2a and Anti-Leu-3a) which define human T-cell surface antigens. Although the control thymus consisted of 82-94% of thymocytes which were reactive with Anti-Leu-2a and 90-95% of cells reactive with Anti-Leu-3a, in UC patients both Leu-2a positive thymus cells (38-56%) and Leu-3a positive cells (68-82%) were decreased. Concerning MG thymocytes, Leu-2a positive cells were also decreased (66-81%), but the percentage of Leu-3a positive cells did not show a remarkable change (86-90%) compared with control thymocytes. Considering the above results and many reports telling functional and populational abnormalities of peripheral immunocompetent cells, the process of intra-thymic T-cell maturation may be impaired in these autoimmune diseases.