CHANGES IN LEUKOCYTES OF THE BLOOD IN MAN AFTER ELECTRICALLY INDUCED CONVULSIONS

Abstract

THE WORK of Dougherty and White¹ and others has established the fact that lysis of circulating lymphocytes is under the hormonal control of the adrenal cortex. In view of the evidence that electrically induced convulsions change the rate of formation of steroid hormones in patients with mental disease,² it was considered of interest to study the number of circulating lymphocytes and other leukocytes before and after such seizures. MATERIAL AND METHODS The subjects were 13 patients ranging in age from 19 to 71 years; 11 were women. The diagnoses varied. Four patients were studied from three to six times each, and 9 were studied once each. Patients studied during treatments which numbered eleven or fewer were being given shock therapy three times a week; the others, studied on the occasion of the twelfth to the fifty-fourth shock, were receiving treatments at five or seven day intervals at the