Abstract
The incidence of apoptotic lymphocytes induced by anesthesia was analyzed in the pheripheral blood of the dog. Two groups of dogs were anesthetized for 3 hours; One was anesthetized with thiopental, halothane, oxygen and the other with isoflurane instead of halothane. Apoptosis of the lymphocyte was determined by chromatin staining with Hoechst 33342, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) -mediated dUTP-biotin nick end labelling (TUNEL), and DNA fragmentation assay. Lower levels of apoptotic lymphocytes were detected both in halothane and isoflurane groups (10±1.2% and 6±1.3% using TUNEL method, respectively) before anesthesia. After anesthesia, the decrease in the number of total lymphocytes in the pheripheral blood and the increase in apoptotic lymphocytes were observed in both groups (21±2.1% and 20±4.2%, respectively) after 24hr of in vitro cultivation. These results revealed that the lymphocyte apoptosis was induced by both anesthesia.
