Transfer of colon inflammatory disease from immune to normal guinea pigs by lymphocytes.

Lymphocytes from guinea pigs which had been immunized with a saline extract of rabbit colon in complete Freund's adjuvant were transferred to normal guinea pigs of the same strain. 19% of the donors and 42% of the recipients developed histologic alterations of the colon. Recipients of killed lymphocytes from immune animals, normal lymphocytes, or animals immunized with an unrelated antigen had normal tissue histology. Thus, a cell-mediated immune response directed to an antigen found in a saline extract of colon is a factor in the pathogenesis of this experimental model of immunologically mediated colon disease.