Proliferation characteristics of lymphoid cells of human bone marrow in health and in chronic renal failure.

Proliferation of bone marrow lymphoid cells of 8 healthy subjects and 7 patients with chronic renal insufficiency was compared using the cytophotometric measurement of the DNA content combined with 3H-thymidine labelling in vitro. In renal insufficiency the cells showed a marked decrease of the proliferation activity. This is apparent from the impaired labelling indices and accumulation of diploid and unlabelled cells. The data suggest that the lymphoid cell proliferation is affected by the same pathophysiological mechanism as that leading to impairment of red cell production. By subclassification according to cytoplasmic basophilia, this proliferation disturbance could be related to the basophilic and not to the pale type of lymphoid cells.