title: Haematopoietic progenitors in essential thrombocythaemia.
abstract: Colony formation by haematopoietic progenitors from the bone marrow and blood of 4 patients with essential thrombocythaemia was studied in vitro using the methyl cellulose assay. 3 patients had clearly elevated numbers of BFU-E in bone marrow. 1 patient also had markedly increased numbers of CFU-E and CFU-GM, whereas the other patients had only marginally increased or normal numbers of these progenitors in the marrow. 3 patients showed markedly increased numbers of all progenitors in peripheral blood. All 4 patients showed spontaneous erythroid colony formation by progenitors from the bone marrow and 2 had spontaneous colony formation by progenitors from the blood. We conclude that essential thrombocythaemia shows abnormal colony formation in line with other myeloproliferative syndromes.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001854:Bone Marrow Cells; D003114:Colony-Forming Units Assay; D004912:Erythrocytes / Q000166:cytology; D004920:Erythropoiesis; D005260:Female; D006098:Granulocytes / Q000166:cytology; D006410:Hematopoiesis; D006412:Hematopoietic Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009000:Monocytes / Q000166:cytology; D013922:Thrombocytosis / Q000097:blood*