A crevicular washing method for investigating immune components of crevicular fluid in man

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Abstract
A technique was developed to collect crevicular fluid from clinically normal gingiva by washing out the gingival crevices with a microsyringe. The leucocytes were well preserved and sequential washings 12 times showed that the viability, determined by trypan blue dye exclusion, increased from a mean (±SE) of 81.4(±6.8)% to 99.3 (±0.7)%. Whilst the viability increased the total number of leucocytes decreased from 805 (±188) to 95 (±25) cells after 11‐12 washings. The minimal rest period required for the leucocyte count to exceed 50% of the initial value was about 25 minutes and this was decreased to about 5 minutes on biting. Differential leucocyte counts showed 91.5 (±1.1)% neutrophils and 8.5 (±1.2)% mononuclear cells which included monocytes, lymphocytes and blast cells. It is suggested that this technique enables the functional cellular and humoral immune components to be investigated.