ABSTRACT
We wvaluated the effect of different concentrations of colchicine (0.0, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5 µg/ml) and phytohemagglutinin (PHA) (0.10, 0.15, 0.20 µg/ml) on the rate of C-anaphases in lymphocyte cultures from five healthy individuals with the common variant of C-anaphases. For each of the 12 possible combinations, two subjects were randomly tested. The frequency of these variant figures was <3 percent; a single culture (out of six with the colchicine concentration of 0.1 µg/ml) lacked C-anaphases. Multiple variance and Student's t tests revealed, as the only significant difference, a decrease with the colchicine concnetration of 0.3 µg/ml compared with the cultures without colchicie (p<0.05), which exhibited the greatest ratio of C-anaphases. The PHA had no influence on the frequency of C-anaphases. We conclude that the common variant of C-anaphases is unrelated to the colchicine and PHA concentrations tested; moreover, our data confirm the occurrence of such a mitotic variant in colchicine-free cultures