Abstract
Clinical, laboratory features, as well as the hematopoietic stem cells of 10 patients with essential thrombocythemia (ET) were used in a comparison study with another group of 12 patients with polycythemia vera (PV). Both diseases were diagnosed under PV study group's diagnostic criteria.
No significant differences were observed due to either the median age at diagnosis, the incidence of thrombo-hemorrhagic phenomena, the degree of hepato-splenomegaly or other clinical features. Some differences due to the sex of the patient, were noticed between the ET and PV groups, however.
On the other hand, the ET group revealed such hematological characteristics as mild anemia, markedly incresed platelet counts, decreased platelet adhesiveness, and positive spontaneous platelet aggregations.
In the colony formation by hematopoietic stem cells from bone marrow, the PV group had a significantly higher number of CFU-e than those of the ET group, and showed a higher number of CFU-e spontaneous colony formations in all patients.
However, the ET group showed PV-like numbers of CFU-e spontaneous colony formations in one paticular patient, but did not show CFU-e spontaneous colony formation in any other of 5 patients.
These results suggest that some patients, although diagnosed as ET and who show a markedly high incidence of CFU-e spontaneous colony formation, might possibly fall into the PV classification. Because the present diagnostic criteria for both diseases lack the specificity to differrentiate one from the other, the finding of hematopoietic stem cells are considered to be important criteria in the future.
