On the fate of DNA synthesizing lymphoid blood cells in Hodgkin's disease.

Autotransfusions of the DNA synthesizing blood cells from 2-2.5 liters of blood, labelled in vitro with 3H-thymidine, were performed in 2 patients with Hodgkin's disease. The fate of the labelled lymphoid cells was followed up for 5 min to 60 h in the circulating blood and occasionally in the lymph node tissue. The data indicate that 1) circulating DNA synthesizing large lymphoid cells leave the blood in less than 2 h; 2) they produce by mitosis large and medium sized lymphocytes, which mainly appear in blood and lymph nodes and 3) their generation time, in agreement with other estimates, is about 25 h.