An Investigation about Cell Proliferation in Lymph Node Granulomas Obtained from Sarcoidosis Patients

Abstract

The general concept of the mononuclear phagocytic system is that stem cells differentiate to promonocytes to monocytes which are released from the bone marrow into the circulation to eventually enter the tissues as macrophages (1,2). If a granuloma is present, these cells differentiate into epithelioid cells and/or multinucleated giant cells (1). The development and function of granulomas in pathology is reviewed in references 3–5. Spector described high turnover granulomas characterized by cell infiltration and extensive local proliferation, and low turnover granulomas in which these events are much less (6,7). The toxicity of the granuloma inducing agent determined what kind of granuloma was produced. It is generally agreed that granulomas in sarcoidosis are high turnover granulomas (1,7). In an earlier report (8), we described in these granulomas a very low number of mitotic figures. In this study, we measured local cell metabolism in lymph node granuloma slices with radio-nucleotides.