Behavior of lymphoid cell population, cell nuclei and nucleoli in periodic disease and leukemia

Similar behavior of lymphoid cells, their nuclei and nucleoli in periodic disease and leukemia attest to nonspecific reaction of the immune system to these diseases, but the intensity of this reaction and mechanisms of the population recovery are different. DNA hyperreplication plays an important role in this process: in periodic disease it is realized via gene amplification, which manifests by the formation of H2c nuclei and increase in the number of nucleoli, while in leukemia bone marrow lymphoblasts double the DNA content during S phase, maturate during G2 phase, and then divide. We called this mechanism “reserve lymphopoiesis” by analogy with reserve erythropoiesis discovered previously by us.