AN APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF PRIMITIVE THROMBOCYTHEMIA (PT) MEGAKARYOCYTES BY MEANS OF FOURIER-TRANSFORM INFRARED MICROSPECTROSCOPY (FT-IR-M)

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), polycythemia vera (PV), idiopathic mye lofibrosis (IM) and primary thrombocythemia (PT) are myeloproliferativ e diseases of clonal origin. Megakaryocyte series are commonly involve d in these disorders. In a previous paper of us, megakaryocytes (MKs) from PV and PT patients were shown to be more pathological with respec t to the MKs from CML. This paper describes a Fourier transform infrar ed microspectroscopy (FT-IR-M) study analyzing the cytoplasm and nucle us areas of MKs from thrombocythemic patients which exhibited numerous giant cells (from 100 to 190 mu m in diameter). The size of these cel ls makes it possible to analyze the cell parts using FT-IR-M technique . The infrared determinations on 10 single MKs for each case examined in these two different cell regions revealed spectral differences with a high degree of reproducibility. Finally, the spectra of whole MKs f rom normal donors and from thrombocythemic patients were also compared .