Experimental Production of the L. E. Phenomenon in the Skin of Man. ∗

Summary and conclusions

The L.E. cell phenomenon has been produced experimentally in the skin of two normal human volunteers following inoculation of windows with the plasma of a patient with acute disseminated lupus erythematosus. In vivo, under the conditions of our experiments, the neutrophilic L.E. cell usually developed as the result of ingestion of other neutrophilic nuclear lobes or nuclei which had undergone a previous partial peculiar lysis. Less commonly the L.E. cell may represent the originally affected neutrophilic leukocyte in which lobar lysis is out of step in the individual nuclear lobes. The experiments described should provide a means of testing the proposed identity of the L.E. cells and the “hematoxylin staining bodies” of the diseased tissues in acute disseminated lupus erythematosus, an identity recently suggested by several workers (11,12).