Mitogen-stimulated lymphocyte growth and chronic uraemia

Lymphocytes were isolated from venous blood by the Böyum method from 36 patients with chronic renal failure: the preparations were more frequently and more heavily contaminated with non-lymphoid cells than the equivalent preparations from normal controls. Volume spectroscopy measurements showed that, in the samples without gross contamination, lymphocytes from uraemic subjects react to mitogen stimulation with normal pre-S-phase cell-cycle kinetics. In other experiments, plasma from uraemic patients was shown to be more potent than serum in inhibiting the growth of mitogen-stimulated lymphocytes from normal subjects, both in the first G1-phase and in replicative growth. Thus humoral suppression appears to be more important than a cellular defect in explaining the depressed responses of uraemic blood to mitogen stimulation.