[Evaluation of a commercial kit for performing in vitro bone marrow cultures]

The efficiency of the GIBCORkit "Human Bone Marrow Stem Cell Proliferation Kit" for haemopoietic progenitors cultures, has been assessed in 24 bone marrow samples. The results, compared with those obtained in a parallel study with the routine method used in our laboratory (reference method), suggests that the kit has higher capacity for detecting haemopoietic progenitors, which is due to the increased number of BFU-E (108 +/- 78 vs 23 +/- 23, p < 0.0001). Total CFU-GM (considered here as the sum of CFU-G and CFU-M), do not differ significantly from the reference method (70 +/- 64 vs 77 +/- 64, p = 0.60) despite its increased CFU-G growth (25 +/- 26 vs 67 +/- 54, p < 0.0001). The finding of similar results in a multicentric study may contribute to demonstrate the advantages of this standardized method in the clinical practice.