Studies on Cyclic Neutropenia

Abstract

Cyclic neutropenia is a rare disease characterized by the regular disappearance of neutrohils from the circulating blood at approximately 21-day intervals. The neutropenic phase of the cycle is generally associated with clinical manifestations of fever, malaise, and the appearance of ulcers in the oral mucous membranes. Other symptoms, which are not common to all the patients, include intermittent arthralgia, abdominal pain, sore throat, lymphadenitis, headache, ischiorectal infections, mental depression, conjunctivitis, and cutaneous ulcers. To date only 23 well-documented cases have been reported in the literature. A summary of these cases is presented in Table 1. The neutrophils in the peripheral blood regularly fall to extremely low levels and often disappear for several days during each cycle. Between attacks the neutrophils may rise to nearly normal levels, but in most of the reported cases the neutrophil count is always somewhat lower than normal and seldom exceeds 50% of the differential count.