The significance of the ratio of blood to marrow hematopoietic progenitors (CFU-GM and CFU-GEMM) in relation to disease state of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
We studied a total of 143 patients with 231 assays of CFU-GM, of these, 45 patients were studied with 58 simultaneous assays of CFU-GEMM in an attempt to correlate progenitor colony growth with disease state. Blood and marrow leukocytes were cultured in a standard methylcellulose culture system using normal human leukocyte colony stimulating activity. Results are expressed as natural logarithm of the ratio of blood colonies to marrow colonies. A high ratio of blood to marrow (greater than 1) was seen in active disease while a low ratio occurred during remission. Eighty-seven per cent of CFU-GM matched pair samples with active disease had high ratios while less than 1% of remission samples were high. In addition, patients with suspected relapse or relapse up to 14 months after this test often had high ratios indicating this test could be of prognostic value. It is not known if this effect of ALL is unique to ALL or if it occurs as a reaction to any hematopoietic stress.
Chervinsky
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DS
Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Department of Pediatrics, Buffalo, NY 14263.
Tebbi
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Freeman
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D001853:Bone Marrow / Q000473:pathology*; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003114:Colony-Forming Units Assay; D006410:Hematopoiesis; D006412:Hematopoietic Stem Cells / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D066298:In Vitro Techniques; D054198:Precursor Cell Lymphoblastic Leukemia-Lymphoma / Q000473:pathology* / Q000628:therapy; D011379:Prognosis