Objective To investigate the correlation of T cell subgroups and natural killer (NK) cell's activity level of peripheral blood of the patients with refractory lymphoma. Methods Flow cytometry was applied to detect T cell subgroups' level and NK cell's activity of peripheral blood in 60 early cure lymphoma patients with chemotherapy before and 20 normal controls , after chemotherapy follow-up they were divided into 30 cases of difficult cure group and 30 cases of effective group. Results Compared with the normal controls, CD+4, CD+4/CD+8 and NK cell in lymphoma patients with chemotherapy before decreased (30.17±8.63 vs 46.52±1.39, t =12.218, P ＜0.05; 0.86±0.45 vs 1.64±0.05, t =11.225, P ＜0.05; 12.39±7.08 vs 19.29±0.84,t =6.365, P＜0.05), while CD+3 and CD+8 cell increased (76.14±10.71 vs 70.48±1.44, t =-3.439, P＜0.05;40.28±14.03 vs 28.35±0.73, t =-5.625, P ＜0.05). Compared with effective group, CD+4 CD+4/CD+8 and NK cell in difficult response group with chemotherapy before decreased (27.70±7.81 vs 33.13±8.82, t =2.163, P =0.036;0.67±0.27 vs 1.10±0.52, t =3.272, P =0.003; 9.87±6.60 vs 15.40±6.58, t =2.771, P =0.008), while CD+3 and CD+8 cell increased (79.67±8.18 vs 71.91±12.00, t =-2.540, P =0.015; 44.70±13.99 vs 34.98±12.41, t =-2.416,P =0.020). Conclusion The detection of T cell subgroups' level and NK cell' s activity in early lymphoma patients before chemotherapy may play a role to diagnose and predict the outcome of refractory lymphoma patients.