The Metabolism of Leucocytes from Normal and Leukemic Blood.

Warburg's studies (9) on the metabolism of tumor cells have stimulated great interest in similar studies of the blood corpuscles. Grafe (1) has shown that leucocytes consume considerable amounts of oxygen. Although it had previously been known that they are capable of splitting sugar, it remained for Levene and Meyer (2) to demonstrate their ability to produce lactic acid from dextrose. Maclean and Weir (3), in comparing the glycolytic power of leucocytes and erythrocytes, found that the former have a glycolytic power several hundred times greater than the latter. Metabolic studies have been carried out with a view of determining the oxygen consumption and sugar destruction of leucocytes, and of mature as compared with that of immature white corpuscles. These studies have yielded contradictory results. Daland and Isaacs (4) as well as Glover, Daland and Schmitz (5) concluded that mature leucocytes consume greater amounts of oxygen than do immature white cells. The latter investigators (5) also concluded that the glycolytic function of the leucocytes, at least in whole blood, is inversely proportional to the maturity of the cells. These findings could not be confirmed by Barron and Harrop (6), who emphasized the depressing effect of concentration on both the oxygen consumption and sugar destruction of white blood cells. The object of this paper is to study further, with improved technic, the effect of cell maturity and cell concentration on the metabolic activity of leucocytes. METHOD