CHANGES IN THE WHITE CELL COUNT FOLLOWING TOOTH EXTRACTION IN ALBINO RATS AND RABBITS

¹ Department of Medicine, Loyola University, School of Medicine, Chicago, Ill.

1. Tooth extraction has an immediate effect upon the white blood cell count of albino rats and rabbits.

2. This effect varies in animals with normal, stimulated, or depressed white cell formation. In normal animals, both in albino rats and rabbits, tooth extraction results in an immediate transient leukopenia followed by leukocytosis. Skin incision is followed only by immediate moderate leukocytosis.

3. In rabbits treated with benzol for a brief period, the immediate reaction to tooth extraction is a still deeper depression of the white cell count, which is not followed by leukocytosis.

4. In rabbits treated with adenylic acid, the reaction immediately after tooth extraction is a leukocytosis which is more marked than in control animals, without any previous decrease in the white cell count.

5. In rabbits treated with pentnucleotide, the tooth extraction causes a more pronounced leukopenia if performed in the leukopenic stage, and a more pronounced leukocytosis if carried out in the stage of leukocytosis, as compared to that of the control animals.

6. In splenectomized albino rats, the results of tooth extraction vary in the time which elapses between splenectomy and tooth extraction. Albino rats, which are splenectomized shortly before tooth extraction, show no appreciable reaction. If tooth extraction is performed about 4 months after splenectomy, it causes a marked leukocytosis preceded by a moderate leukopenia, similar to the reaction of normal, non-splenectomized rats.