DOUBLE IMMUNOCYTOCHEMICAL EVALUATION OF L YMPHOID-CELL PROLIFERATION AND LINE IN DIFFERENT LYMPHOPROLIFERATIVE DISEASES

The increased range of the diagnostic criteria and the introduction of the classification scheme ''Practical Formulation of Non-Hodgkin's Ly mphomas for Clinical Application'' made the authors to study prolifera tive potential of lymphoid cells with identification of the cell line affiliation. The investigation was carried out with the use of the dou ble immunocytochemical test employing anti-nuclear (Ki-67) and line-sp ecific monoclonal antibodies on peripheral blood lymphocytes, those of lymph nodes and bone marrow obtained from 40 patients with lymphoprol iferative diseases and on the cells of lymphoblastoid line 501. The di sease variant was classified according to the WHO criteria. The highes t (>60 %) proliferative activity of lymphoid cells was found in the bo ne marrow in acute non-T non-B lymphoblast leukemia and in lymph node in T-cell and non-T non-B-cell lymphoblast lymphosarcoma. A broad rang e in the number of proliferative cells existed among B-cell lymphosarc omas of lymphoblast (12-73 %) and prolymphocytic (0-91 %) variants. To gether with heterogeneous immunological phenotype, this reflects a wid e spectrum of various nosological entities recognized by the WHO class ification as lymphoblast and prolymphocytic variants of lymphosarcoma, says about the defects of the above classification. Extremely low (<1 %) percent of proliferative cells was observed in B-cell chronic lymp hoid leukemia and hairy-cell leukemia. These differences in tumor cell proliferative potential in different lymphoproliferative diseases agr ee with the views on maturation and differentiation of lymphoid cells. The data obtained by the authors support the necessity of correcting routine histological data by immunological characteristics of patholog ical lymphoid cells, primarily, by introduction of data on cell prolif erative activity. According to the proposed classification scheme, the key criterion is the malignancy of tumor cell population determined b y proliferative activity of the clone pathological cells.