Autotransfusion of ³H-cytidine-labelled blood lymphocytes followed by autoradiographic evaluation as studied in 11 patients with Hodgkin’s disease and 3 other patients seems to be an appropriate method to estimate migration kinetics and pool sizes of lymphocytes. However, it is complicated by two major pitfalls: (1) The free (extracellular) activity of ³H-cytidine transfused along with the cell-bound label is sufficient to cause DNA labelling of newly produced lymphocytes in the body. (2) The soluble intracellular pool of ³H-labelled compounds causes an increase of labelling intensity of lymphocyte RNA in the first hours after cell transfusion. Methods to correct for these sources of error are described.

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