Experimental autoimmune glomerulonephritis with pulmonary hemorrhage in rats. The dose-effect relationship of the nephritogenic antigen from bovine glomerular basement membrane.

Experimental autoimmune glomerulonephritis with pulmonary hemorrhage was induced in rats by a single injection of soluble antigen obtained from bovine glomerular basement membrane. Groups of rats were injected with various amounts of the nephritogenic antigen with Freund's complete adjuvant and killed 10 weeks later. Glomerulonephritis with linear deposition of IgG along the glomerular basement membrane developed in 7 of 10 rats injected with 10 micrograms of the antigen and all 20 rats of other 2 groups with 100 or 1,000 micrograms of the antigen. Pulmonary hemorrhage was observed in 21 of 27 rats with nephritis, and it was particularly severe in those injected with 1,000 micrograms. Glomerulonephritis with pulmonary hemorrhage and the linear deposition of IgG along with the glomerular basement membrane suggests that this model resembles human anti-glomerular basement membrane antibody-induced glomerulonephritis including Goodpasture's syndrome. The nephritic rats showed symptoms of nephrotic syndrome such as hypoalbuminemia, hypercholesterolemia and hypertriglyceremia, and the severities of these symptoms clearly depended on the degree of proteinuria.