POLY-LOBATION OF THE POLYMORPHONUCLEAR NEUTROPHILE AS A RESULT OF WORK AND TIME AGEING

Abstract

Dead fetuses retained in utero offer opportunity to study the effect of phagocytizing and auto-lysing on neutrophille lobation. Rats were used in which one dead fetus was retained from 12 hrs. to 8 days. Poly-nuclear counts were made in both uterine blood vessels and comparable regions in the uterine cavity. The normal colony polynuclear index was shown to be 1.15 (Yeager and Haterius, ''30). This was constant in blood vessels of the uterus of pregnant animals. The polynuclear cells in the blood vessels of the uterus of exptl. animals showed a tendency to right deflection after 24 hrs. retention. This was followed by a left swing after 48 hrs., then by a shift to the right, and after 8 days retention the index was 1.24. In the uterine cavity, the index showed a steady right shift through 48 hrs.'' retention, after which there appeared to be a slight movement to the left, followed by a most apparent rise after 96 hrs., while the 8 day period indexed 3.04. This shift indicated that during continued retention the leucocytes in the uterine cavity became more lobated. Lobation is evidently a factor of time and experience ageing (Ponder and Climenko, ''34).