Bone-Marrow Responses in Polycythemia Vera

Abstract

To the Editor: We wish to report the unusual behavior in vitro of bone-marrow cells from patients with polycythemia vera. Polycythemia vera is a myeloproliferative disorder that involves all the hemopoietic lines of differentiation, but it is the increased red-cell mass that dominates the clinical picture. Since the urinary erythropoietin level in this condition is low but increases in response to phlebotomy,¹ the basis for the erythrocytosis does not seem to be a lesion in the regulation of erythropoietin production.To investigate erythrocytic progenitor cells (CFU-E or colony-forming units that respond to erythropoietin²) in polycythemia vera, we have used . . .