Iodinated contrast material: studies relating to complement activation, atopy, cellular association, and antigenicity.

There are multiple problems of iodinated contrast physiology and iodinated contrast reactions that remain unresolved. The author's recent work has included studies in four of these areas. (I) In evaluating complement activation following contrast reactions, significant drops in total hemolytic complement were found, as well as that the reactors had lower baseline complement levels than nonreactors. (II) The leukocytes of atopics and of nonatopics were incubated with contrast and a greater release of histamine was found among the atopics than among the normal subjects. (III) Since histamine can be shown to be released from leukocytes by contrast, I-125-sodium diatrizoate was incubated with blood to detect any cellular association for the contrast. Significant retention of radioactivity was demonstrated by the leukocytes and not the erythrocytes. (IV) The gluteraldehyde technique was used to conjugate diatrizoate bovine serum albumen. After injection of this conjugate into a rabbit, antibody activity in the rabbit serum to the diatrizoate was demonstrated via the enzyme-linked immunospecific assay system.