work2* 3 , has demonstrated a greater than normal activity of the enzyme @-glucuronidase in human neoplastic tissues. It has further been shown1 that for the most part, it is present in the buffy coat of human blood. This study was undertaken in order to determine the 0-glucuronidase activity of the buffy coat of human Hodgkin's-disease and leukemic blood. A number of determinations using the buffy coat ofnormal human subjects and patients with diseases other than leukemia or Hodgkin's disease were made as a control measure.
METHOD
The principal difficulty encountered in the development of a suitable technique was the separation of the buffy layer from the red cells. Several methods described by other authors were tried but in our hands proved unsatisfactory. The following method was devised to determine the activity of @-glucuronidase per gram of buffy coat:
Fasting blood is drawn into a tube containing 2 mg. of heparin (Upjohn) per 10 cc. of blood. The amount of blood necessary to obtain a buffy coat varies directly with the white blood-cell count. I n normal subjects, 50 cc. are necessary; whereas, in patients with a white blood count of more than sixty-From the