The periodic acid-Schiff reaction in neutrophil leukocytes in untreated and myleran-treated chronic myelocytic leukemia. A quantitative microspectrophotometric study.

REDUCTION IN THE MEAN AMOUNT of periodic acid-Schiff reactive material ( PASMa ) in neutrophil leukocytes from patients with chronic myelocytic leukemia ( CML ) has previously been noted with semiquantitative “score” methods.’m The PASMa studied in these investigations proved to be digestible with saliva or diastase and was therefore considered to consist of glycogen. So far, no attempt has been made to follow a possible quantitative change iii the reaction at various stages of the leukemia during treatment. This is prol)ahly due to the obvious difficulty of obtaining accurate results with the “score” methods due to the rather intensive PAS reaction of both normal and Ieukemic neutrophil leukocytes. Recently, a microspectrophotometric method has I)een developed for the quantification of the PAS reaction in single cells,4’5 thus permitting accurate studies of both the mean amount of PASMa in cells and the frequency distribution of PASMa per cell. In the