Toxicity in uremia. 1. Correlation between PTH levels and depressed cell proliferation.

Cell proliferation is significantly depressed in uremia; to assess the influence of PTH on it, normal lymphocytes were cultured in presence of uremic patients' serum with low or high plasma PTH levels (Group A; PTH less than 2.5 ng/ml; Group B: PTH greater than 12 ng/ml), and serum of normal subjects (Group C). Cell proliferation was lowered by serum from both groups (p A vs C less than 0.004; p B vs C less than 0.001). However, the depressing effect was more evident when group B serum was employed (p A vs B less than 0.002).