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. 1973 Apr;24(4):617–633.

Differing effects of dietary protein deprivation on the levels of serum haemagglutinins in rats immunized to sheep red cells

A Aschkenasy
PMCID: PMC1422918  PMID: 4540983

Abstract

After two intraplantar injections of sheep red blood cells (SRBC) + Freund's complete adjuvant given at intervals of a week, rats which had been deprived of dietary proteins for 65 days produced much smaller quantities of serum haemagglutinins than normally fed rats. On the other hand protein-deprived rats reacted with at least the same intensity as the controls with respect to the phenomenon of immunocyto-adherence, tested by counting the rosette-forming cells in the lymph nodes and the spleen.

The number of these cells per whole organ remained normal but their proportion per 103 lymphocytes exceeded, by a considerable extent, the value in the control rats. This phenomenon was apparently linked to the predominant reduction in the population of T-lymphocytes, resulting from the atrophy of the thymus that follows deprivation of proteins. Infact in the non-deficient adult rats which had been thymectomized at the age of 25 days, there was also found to be a fall in the level of serum anti-SRBC haemagglutinins, contrasting with an increase in the number of rosette-forming cells per 103 lymphocytes in the lymph nodes and spleen and the presence of a normal or even increased number of these cells per lymphoid organ. It was only when thymectomy and the protein-free diet were combined that a reduction was obtained in the total rosette content of the lymph nodes.

Histological and autoradiographic examination of the popliteal lymph nodes showed that protein starvation reduced both the thymus-independent and thymus-dependent zones, but that the cellular proliferation due to the antigenic stimulation involved, in the protein-deprived rats, the B-lymphocytes far more than the T-lymphocytes; this happened to a greater extent if the animals had been thymectomized.

It appears that the diminution in the population of T-lymphocytes following either protein-deprivation or late (not neonatal) thymectomy was by itself insufficient to influence the phenomenon of immunocyto-adherence, although there was impairment of the serum haemagglutinin response to SRBC. Only the association of protein deficiency with late thymectomy reduced both of the reactions.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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