Comparative Study of Four Isolation Procedures to Obtain Rat Neutrophils

Abstract:

The present study was performed to compare four different methods for isolating neutrophils from rat whole blood. Rat blood has many more lymphocytes than neutrophils when compared to the human blood and this characteristic makes difficult the separation procedure for neutrophils. There are reports in the literature that compare the properties of separation and functional responses of differemt animal species and they usually use Percoll (a solution of silica particles coated with polyvinylpyrrolidone) at different densities and the influence of rat strains on the separation of granulocytes using Percoll solutions has been studied. In this comparative study we used four methods of isolation that use chemical reagents other than Percoll, and a two-step Histopaque gradient technique has been shown to be more appropriate for obtaining rat neutrophils. Many important parameters have been considered for routine employment in making this choice.