Improvement of preparative conditions for cytogenetic studies by short-term liquid culture of haemopoietic cells.

In patients with haemopoietic failure, the low incidence of cells in mitosis often prevents successful chromosome preparations. By performing liquid cultures of myeloid cells a high incidence of mitoses could be obtained even in those cases failing to provide mitoses when the direct preparation technique was used. The cytogenetic studies demonstrated that the mitoses achieved by culture techniques were aneuploid and, thus, there is evidence that they are of leukaemic origin. The combination of short-term liquid culture and chromosome analysis appears to be a diagnostic approach in selected cases of hemopoietic insufficiency.