The Periodic Acid‐Schiff Reaction in Neutrophil Leukocytes in Chronic Myeloproliferative Diseases A microspectrophotometric study

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Abstract
Microspectrophotometric quantification of the PAS reaction has been carried out in about 4500 individual mature neutrophil leukocytes from 20 normal persons, and from 15 patients with chronic myelocytic leukaemia (CML), 18 patients with myeloid metaplasia, and 17 patients with polycythaemia vera (PV).The reaction is considered to be a quantitative measure of the amount of PAS reactive material (PASMa) in neutrophils, most of it probably glycogen. Neutro‐phils from CML had a mean amount of PASMa that was 39 per cent below normal, the frequency distribution of PASMa per cell being approximately normal in individual cases. Neutrophils from myeloid metaplasia usually had elevated mean amounts of PASMa and considerably elevated variance between cells within subjects. Neutrophils from PV had a mean amount of PASMa that was 33 per cent above normal, with a highly augmented variance between cells within subjects. There was no correlation between the number of nuclear lobes and the amount of PASMa per cell in any diagnostic group. The quantified PAS reaction is considered to be of diagnostic importance for the differentiation of CML and myeloid metaplasia.