[Granulopoiesis: comparison of several methods for studying production and bone marrow cellularity (author's transl)]

Several methods measuring the granulocyte production have been compared in normal subjects, hypoplastic granulopenia, chronic leucopenia and acute leukemia: the granulocyte turnover-rate after injection of in vitro 51Cr labelled autologous granulocytes, the efficiency of 75Se-selenothionine in vivo labelling, the flow-out of the myelocyte compartment after in vitro flash-labelling with 3H-thymidine. The two first methods are correlated and measure the global effective production of granulocytes. The third method is a fractional measure of the bone marrow production and is not correlated with the former ones. The ratio between the granulocyte turnover-rate and the flow-out of the bone marrow proliferative pool is a measure of the bone marrow cellularity. Discrepancies between this measure and the granulocyte turnover-rate has been found only in leukaemic patients.