Quantitative and Qualitative Variations in Normal Leukocytes

Basophilic Leucocytes in Children in Health and Disease

“…The difficulty of selecting normal children for leucocyte counts has been pointed out by Sturgis and Bethell (1943). Relatively mild infections, such as are common among apparently healthy school children, may cause fluctuations in the leucocyte count, while increased eosinophil and basophil counts have been reported in chronic tonsillar enlargement and chronic sinusitis respectively (Bunting, 1914;Rud, 1947).…”

Normal laboratory values for differential white cell counts established by manual and automated cytochemical methods (Hemalog DTM)

“…Extreme normal limits for neutrophils have been reported as 33-75% and 47-79-5 % (Zacharski, Elueback, and Linman, 1971); lymphocytes as 12-5-40-0% and 15-0-60% (Whitby and Britton, 1963) and 25-35% (Fowler, 1945); monocytes as 0-9-0% (Osgood, Brownlee, Osgood, Ellis, and Cohen, 1939) and 2-0-11 % (Zacharski et al, 1971); eosinophils as 0-7-2% (Wintrobe, 1967) and 2-0-3% (Sturgis and Bethell, 1943); and basophils as 0-2-0% (Sandoz, 1952). Most observers have not reported a normal range for bands probably because of the controversial arbitrary classification problems defining cellular age, although Orfanakis, Ostlund, Bishop, and Athens (1970) have recently reported the range as between 200 and 2150 bands per cubic mm of blood and Miale (1967) 55 normal ranges when determined as falling between the 2-5 and 97-5 percentiles of the sample distribution, the classic ± 2 standard deviations being universally used.…”

Transplacental influence of the thymus.

“…The frequency with which pregnancy effected a marked increase in peripheral blood lymphocyte levels of thymectomized female rats could be simply interpreted as an indication that fetal factors had crossed the placenta to influence maternal lymphoid tissue as readily as this effect occurred in the other direction. Although the capacity of pregnancy and parturition to elevate peripheral blood levels of polymorphonuclear leukocytes has been well documented in humans (7), it is most unlikely that increases in lymphocyte levels of the order of magnitude observed in the present experiments are a normal consequence of parturition. The present observations of normal rats during pregnancy certainly do not reveal such an increase.…”