Hormonal evaluation of premature menarche produced by a follicular cyst

Abstract

blood collected from their respective mothers at the time of delivery. Those preparations were always white. We studied these cells carefully and found a significant contamination of the lymphocytes by nucleated red ceils. When blood from these children was again studied six to eight weeks later with the same methods, we found that the T and B cells had apparently returned to normal. Smears had been made for differential analysis from the cord blood of those erythroblastotic children. We found a range of 89 to 120 nucleated red cells per 100 white cells in those infants. By six weeks of age, the reticulocyte count in these inf-ants had returned to normal levels of 4 per cent or less. coincident with the elevation to apparently normal levels of the T and B cells. It was not until the fifth erythroblastotic infant that we finally found an effective technique by which we could remove the nucleated red cells from the lymphocyte preparations without negativeIy affecting the lymphocytes. We found that the simple modification of adding 2 ml, of distilled water to the lymphocyte pellet, dispersing the cells for twenty seconds by pipetting, and then immediatelv adding a salt solution of sufficient strength to biing the molarity of the solution to O.l.?hi resulted in lysis of the nucleated red cells only, with retained functional lymphocytes. Cord blood was obtained at the time of delivery of this erythroblastotic infant, and the lymphocytes from the Ficollhypdque gradient interface were separated into two halves. Half of these cells were processed in the usual fashion, and half were water lysed. T and B cell determinations were then accomplished in the standard fashion on both samples. The sampIe that was studied without removal of. nucleated red blood cells was read as being 6 per cent T cells and 4 per cent B cells while t.he other aliquot gave 41 per cent T cells and 15 per cent B cells. All treated mothers who were studied (five) were fomld to have normal adult levels of both T and B cells (54 ? 6 r’s and 15 ? 3 B’s). There was no apparent effect of the promethazine hydrochloride on maternal lymphocyte numbers. 0ur first impression that the low levels of T and B cells found in the erythroblastotic newborn infant might be clue to the promethazine hydrochloride treatment was erroneous. When contaminating nucleated red cells were removed from the lymphocyte preparation, the levels of T and B cells in the patients studied so far appeared to be normal. In a recvnt paper by Rubinstein and associates,’ the authors have taken d situation with two variables. the disease pj-ocess erythrobiastosis and the