Autoradiographic study of DNA synthesis in bronchoalveolar-lavage macrophages in chronic inflammatory lung disease

Alveolar macrophages account for about 90% of the total number of inflammatory and immunoeffector cells of respiratory tissue and play an important role in the development of many pathological situations. Experiments on animals have shown that the pulmonary macrophage population can be replenished quantitatively through proliferation of these cells in situ. Attempts have been made to determine whether these cells can proliferate in human respiratory tissue. The aim of this paper is to study the proliferative activity and, in specific, the mechanism of DNA synthesis, of human alveolar macrophages in chronic inflammatory diseases of the lungs by use of a radioisotope method