[Morpho-functional characteristics of normal and pathological human megakaryocytes studied by selective silver staining of cell nucleoli].

The activity of nucleolar organizer (NO) in megakaryocytes (MG) from 8 donors, 10 patients with immune thrombocytopenias (IT), 17 patients with chronic myelocytic leukemia (CML) and 14 patients with multiple myeloma (MM) was studied by silver staining. The average number of nucleoli in MG of normal donors comprised 21.8 per nucleus with a range from 16.6 to 33.7. It was significantly lower in MG of CML patients, and, on the contrary, it was higher in MG of IT patients. The average number of Ag grains per nucleus reflecting their activity in relation to ribosomal RNA synthesis was found to be the highest (127 +/- 32.1) in MG of IT patients but rather low (43.2 +/- 7.2) in CML patients as compared to those of the control (76.5 +/- 11.1) and MM patients (86.0 +/- 5.6). The differences in the functional state of MG in varying diseases as well as possibilities of using this new approach in hematology have been discussed.