Double test of spontaneous rosettes with sheep and mouse erythrocytes. Statistical studies and usefulness in malignant evolutive and nonevolutive lymphoproliferative diseases.

We have demonstrated the log normality of the distribution of sheep rosette-forming cells and mouse rosette-forming cells' values obtained with lymphocytes isolated from the peripheral blood of 135 healthy human beings and 57 patients suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukemia and well differentiated lymphocytic lymphosarcoma with bone marrow infiltration either in evolution or in remission. In evolutive cases, the absolute numbers of mouse rosette-forming cells rose as well as the lymphocytosis, whereas the absolute numbers of sheep rosette-forming cells were normal or even increased in spite of an impressive drop of their percentage. In nonevolutive cases, the absolute numbers of sheep rosette-forming cells and mouse rosette-forming cells were lowered to half of the normal values as a consequence of the lymphopenia induced by chemotherapeutic agents.