🔬 Monocytes: New Diagnostic Standards and Their Role in Medicine
Monocytes are important immune system cells 🛡️ involved in protection against infections, inflammation, and tissue repair. However, their precise microscopic identification and classification have long remained ambiguous, complicating disease diagnosis.
📌 What has changed? The International Council for Standardization in Hematology (ICSH) has developed new recommendations:
- Monocyte Classification
- Blasts and their equivalents (monoblasts, promonocytes)
- Immature monocytes
- Mature monocytes
- Diagnostic Methods
- Morphological analysis (microscopy) 🔍
- Cytochemical stains 🎨
- Flow cytometry 📊
- New Biomarkers
- MDW (monocyte distribution width) — an indicator of changes in infections and tumors.
- LMR (lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio) and NMR (neutrophil-to-monocyte ratio) — aid in disease prognosis.
💡 Why is this important?
- Improves the accuracy of leukemia and inflammatory process diagnostics.
- Helps in the development of AI algorithms for automated analyses.
- Unifies terminology among laboratories worldwide.
These recommendations are a step towards more precise and reproducible medicine.
Source: Zini G., Chang Y.H., d’Onofrio G. et al. ICSH Recommendations for Monocyte Cell Lineage Morphologic Identification, Nomenclature Harmonization, and Utilization as a Biomarker. 2025.
