Spontaneous and busulphan-induced sister-chromatid exchange (SCE) frequencies in haematologically normal human bone marrow and lymphocytes.

In a study of 14 patients who were not treated with either chemotherapy or irradiation, 13 patients had lower sister-chromatid exchange (SCE) frequencies in their bone-marrow cells than in their lymphocytes. For both bone marrow and lymphocytes, there was significant inter-patient variability in SCE frequencies, but there was no correlation between the bone-marrow and lymphocyte values. The effect of exposing bone-marrow cells to busulphan (BUS) in vitro was investigated using doses up to 5.0 microgram/ml. The dose-response relationships between BUS and SCEs in vitro were found to be similar for bone marrow and lymphocytes.