Centre for Health Economics Research and Modeling Infectious Diseases, Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
PLoS One. 2012;7(7):e41405. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0041405. Epub 2012 Jul 25.
Clinical and scientific work routinely relies on antecubital venipunctures for hematological, immunological or other analyses on blood. This study tested the hypothesis that antecubital veins can be considered to be a good proxy for other sampling sites. Using a hematocytometer and a flow cytometer, we analyzed the cell counts from samples coming from the radial artery, the dorsal hand veins and the antecubital veins from 18 volunteers. Most surprisingly, we identified the greatest difference not to exist between arterial and venous circulation, but between the distal (radial artery & dorsal hand veins) and proximal (antecubital veins) sampling sites. Naïve T cells had a higher cell count distally compared to proximally and the reverse was true for effector memory T cells. Despite these differences there were high correlations between the different sampling sites, which partially supports our initial hypothesis. Our findings are crucial for the future design and interpretation of immunological research, and for clinical practice. Furthermore, our results suggest a role for interval lymph nodes in the trafficking of lymphocytes.
临床和科学工作通常依赖于肘前静脉穿刺术来进行血液的血液学、免疫学或其他分析。本研究检验了这样一个假设，即肘前静脉可以被视为其他采样部位的良好替代物。我们使用血细胞计数器和流式细胞仪，分析了来自 18 名志愿者的桡动脉、手背静脉和肘前静脉样本的细胞计数。最令人惊讶的是，我们发现最大的差异不是在动脉和静脉循环之间，而是在远端（桡动脉和手背静脉）和近端（肘前静脉）采样部位之间。幼稚 T 细胞在远端的细胞计数高于近端，而效应记忆 T 细胞则相反。尽管存在这些差异，但不同采样部位之间存在高度相关性，这在一定程度上支持了我们最初的假设。我们的发现对未来免疫研究的设计和解释以及临床实践具有重要意义。此外，我们的结果表明，间隔淋巴结在淋巴细胞的运输中可能发挥作用。
