Passive immune complex glomerulonephritis in mice: models for various lesions found in human disease. I. High avidity complexes and mesangiopathic glomerulonephritis.

Intravenous injection of mice with soluble complexes of highly avid rabbit antibody to egg albumin, prepared by dissolution of equivalence precipitates in large quantities of antigen, resulted in a purely mesangial localization of the complexes. When animals received three injections of complexes per day for 1 day it was noted that precipitates dissolved in 80 times the equivalence amount of antigen produced slight mesangial changes. When such complexes were injected for 2 or 3 days, outright mesangiopathic glomerulonephritis was observed in an increasing proportion of the animals. Equivalent amounts of antigen alone did not produce lesions.