Studies on peripheral monocytes in diabetes mellitus. Part I. Monocyte chemotaxis in diabetes mellitus.

Chemotaxis of diabetic monocytes was studied. The use of 0.25 x 10(6) monocytes, 20% Zymosan activated serum and incubation at 37℃ for 90 minutes were found to be the optimal assay conditions for the Boyden chamber method using a nuclepore filter. Under these conditions, monocyte chemotaxis was tested in 48 diabetics and 27 normal controls. The results were as follows: 1) Diabetics had low monocyte chemotaxis, especially in aged patients. The normal controls showed no difference with aging. 2) Poorly controlled diabetics showed significantly lower chemotaxis than both normal controls(P<0.005) and good controlled diabetics(P