The Question of Cycling of the Blood Neutrophil Concentrations and Pitfalls in the Statistical Analysis of Sampled Data

To test the hypothesis that there is normally a 14-21 day cycle in blood neutrophil concentration, the blood of 13 normal male volunteers was sampled daily for 42 consecutive days. No evidence for cyclic variation in neutrophil concentration was found. The effect of deleting four samples per week an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBlood Vol. 41; no. 1; pp. 85 - 91
Main Authors Maughan, W.Z., Bishop, C.R., Pryor, T.A., Athens, J.W.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Elsevier Inc 01.01.1973
Subjects
Humans
Leukocyte Count
Male
Mathematics
Neutrophils
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Summary:To test the hypothesis that there is normally a 14-21 day cycle in blood neutrophil concentration, the blood of 13 normal male volunteers was sampled daily for 42 consecutive days. No evidence for cyclic variation in neutrophil concentration was found. The effect of deleting four samples per week and interpolating values linearly or paraboiically was tested by power spectrum analysis, since this type of analysis was used in the studies in which cycling was found. The interpolation of missing values was found to introduce apparent cycling, and the results of the analysis of daily neutrophil counts was no different than that obtained with a series of random numbers.
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ISSN:0006-4971
1528-0020
DOI:10.1182/blood.V41.1.85.85