An abnormal hemolytic system associated with leukemia and other disseminated malignant diseases.

By WILLIAM H. CitosBY AN!) NAOMI R. BENJAMIN D URING the past. ten years the phenomenon of “autohemolysis” has been studied in several laboratories’4 and a few investigators have developed it as a met-hod to study the pathogenesis of hemolytic disease.54 The technic is fundamentally simple. Blood is incubated for a time and then the hemolysis which occurred (luring incubation is measured. \Vhen normal blood is incubated for 24 hours at 37 C., few of the red cells are destroyed. Butwhen spherocytosis is present a great deal of hemolysis occurs, especially if oxalate is used as the anticoagulant. In nocturnal hemogbobinuria oxalate prevents the hemolysis w-hich otherwise occurs in PNH blood with no anticoagulant.. The purpose of this report is to describe still another hemolyt.ic system, one that is found in the i)lood of some patients with leukemia, lymphonlata and other disseminated neoplastic