Leucocyte activation and the assessment of leucocyte locomotion.

Leucocyte activation by different agents does not result in a uniform pattern of parallel responses. Some activities have synergistic and others antagonistic effects on directional locomotion in vitro. No reliable correlation between chemotaxis on the one hand and other leucocyte activities such as crawling movements, adhesion to solid substrata and chemokinesis has been firmly established. Therefore, the assessment of chemotaxis by measuring orientation is presumably the only reliable quantitative measure for chemotaxis.