C-anaphases: a mitotic variant.

In order to assess the frequency of C-anaphases in colchicine-arrested lymphocyte cultures, the authors studied 100 patients classified in four groups: spontaneous abortion (n = 17), subfertility (n = 12), aneuploidy (n = 18) and miscellaneous (n = 53). At least 300 mitotic G-banded cells were scored by individual. In 12 individuals no C-anaphases were observed; in 87 individuals the range was 1-7 with a mode of 2 and a mean of 2.14; the remaining individual had 19 C-anaphases in 330 cells (5.7%). The statistical analysis did not show significant differences between the groups (p > 0.05). These data along with previous studies indicate that normally most individuals have < or = 3% of C-anaphases in habitual lymphocyte cultures. Moreover, there exists an autosomal dominant form in which individuals with the trait have > 5% of the cells with such mitotic configurations. We conclude that both the low frequency common and the high frequency familiar forms are mitotic variants without pathological significance.