The role of rheumatoid factor in an electron microscope study of hepatitis B antigens.

An immune electron microscopic (IEM) study of the hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) system has shown that rheumatoid factor (RE) can be an important complicating factor when examining preparations containing multiple antigenic specificities. For example, in the presence of RF, mixed immune complexes were produced that suggested HBeAg might be antigenically related to either Dane particles or cores. When RF was removed, however, the putative HBeAg--anti-Hbe complexes showed no relationship with any other hepatitis B component. It has been shown that RF can have a positive practical application in IEM by using it to link preformed marker complexes to immune complexes which do not contain morphologically recognizable antigen.