Cellular deformability studies in leukemia.

This study was carried out to investigate the red blood cell and white blood cell deformability index in leukemia which is marked by an uncontrolled increase of leucocytes in the bone marrow as well in peripheral blood. It was observed that leucocytes are less deformable than erythrocytes, and erythrocytes from Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) patients less deformable than normal erythrocytes. The deformability indexes for lymphoblasts from acute lymphoblastic leukemia and myeloblasts from acute myelogenous leukemia were almost the same and higher than that of granulocytes from chronic myelogenous leukemia. These observations led to the conclusion that the significant increase in the resistance to the flow of blood in vivo in leukemia may be due to the increase in the number of leucocytes which are more rigid than erythrocytes.