Autotransufsion of 3H-cytidine-labelled blood lymphocytes in patients with Hodgkin's disease and non-Hodgkin patients. I. Limitations of the method.

Autotransfusion of 3H-cytidine-labelled blood lymphocytes followed by autoradiographic evaluation as studied in 11 patients with Hodgkin's disease and pool sizes of lymphocytes. However, it is complicated by two major pitfalls; (1) The free (extracellular) activity of oH-cytidine transfused along with the cell-bound label is sufficient to cause DNA labelling of newly produced lymphocytes in the body. (2) The soluble intracellular pool of 3H-labelled compounds causes an increase of labelling intensity of lymphocyte RNA in the first hours after cell transfusion. Methods to correct for these sources of error are described.