Caulfield M J, Stanko D, Isaak D D
Department of Immunology, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Ohio.
Thymus. 1993 Sep;22(2):91-6.
We have examined the thymic requirement for the antibody response to a foreign antigen coupled to self erythrocytes. We find that self erythrocytes mediate thymus-independent, carrier specific help for the antibody response to the pneumococcal cell wall polysaccharide antigen, PnC. Thus, athymic nude mice gave a high primary antibody plaque-forming cell (PFC) response to PnC-mouse RBC but a low response to PnC coupled to sheep or burro RBC. The meager response to PnC coupled to foreign RBCs could not be attributed to antigenic competition since the response to the carrier (burro RBC) was < 100 PFC per spleen. Reconstitution of nude mice with splenic T cells from euthymic mice enhanced rather than suppressed the antibody response to PnC-mouse RBC. The results document that in the absence of thymic deletion, functional self-reactive helper cells persist in the nude mouse.
我们研究了胸腺对与自身红细胞偶联的外来抗原抗体反应的需求。我们发现，自身红细胞介导了对肺炎球菌细胞壁多糖抗原PnC的抗体反应的非胸腺依赖性、载体特异性辅助作用。因此，无胸腺裸鼠对PnC-小鼠红细胞有较高的初次抗体空斑形成细胞（PFC）反应，但对与绵羊或驴红细胞偶联的PnC反应较低。对与外来红细胞偶联的PnC反应微弱不能归因于抗原竞争，因为对载体（驴红细胞）的反应是每个脾脏<100个PFC。用来自正常胸腺小鼠的脾T细胞重建裸鼠增强而非抑制了对PnC-小鼠红细胞的抗体反应。结果证明，在没有胸腺缺失的情况下，功能性自身反应性辅助细胞在裸鼠中持续存在。
