Bone marrow obtained during hip surgery: a novel source for studies of hemopoiesis in human long-term bone marrow culture (LTBMC).

Studies with human bone marrow cells are often impaired by the poor quality of sternal aspirates due to varying numbers of contaminating blood cells before enrichment procedures and insufficient progenitor cell yields. In this study we report on experiments performed with human bone marrow cells isolated from a) spongiose bone fragments collected during hip surgery in patients with osteoarthritis or b) sternal aspirates. After Ficoll-Histopaque density gradient centrifugation absolute cell numbers were always lower in the samples obtained from sternal aspirates. However, both sources proved to yield the same proportions of the respective myeloid cell populations. Human long-term bone marrow cultures (LTBMC), semi-solid agar assays (CFU-GM day 14), and 3H-thymidine incorporation assays proved the comparability of the two bone marrow sources.