Effect of anaesthesia and surgery on the pre-s-phase cell cycle kinetics of mitogen-stimulated lymphocytes of previously healthy people

Abstract

The influence of general anaesthesia, and of operative surgery, on immune responsiveness was studied in blood obtained from 26 women undergoing laparoscopic sterilization (minor operation group) and in 14 women undergoing abdominal hysterectomy (major operation group). Since immunity depends ultimately on clonal expansion of lymphocytes, the growth potential of peripheral blood lymphocytes was studied in tissue culture by mitogen stimulation. There was no evidence of any change in either the number of responding cells (those that have left the resting Go-phase and responded to mitogen stimulation by entering the Gi-phase of the first cycle of growth) or in the rate at which cells grow in volume during the period of study. It was concluded that there was no evidence that anaesthesia, or surgery, impaired this aspect of the immune response in our patients, but the design of the experiments does not allow comment on other aspects of the immune response such as antigen presentation, immunoregulation and effector mechanisms, which are superimposed on the basic clonal expansion mechanisms studied in this investigation. Incidentally, we noted that the standard method for isolation of lymphocytes from peripheral blood frequently yielded highly contaminated preparations: if this fallacy was not appreciated, tests with contaminated lymphocytes could be misinterpreted as showing depression. © 1983 The Macmillan Press Ltd.