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. 1978 May;34(5):909–917.

Effects of splenectomy on the humoral immune system

A study in neonatally and adult splenectomized mice

J Rozing, N H C Brons, R Benner
PMCID: PMC1457204  PMID: 350762

Abstract

Experiments were performed to investigate the influence of neonatal and adult splenectomy on humoral immunity in mice. In the bone marrow and lymph nodes of both groups of splenectomized mice the number of immunoglobulin (Ig)-positive (B) lymphocytes was significantly higher than in sham-operated mice. These higher numbers of B cells probably reflect a compensation for the absence of the B cell population of the spleen. Hardly any quantitative differences in the serum immunoglobulins were found between splenectomized and sham-splenectomized mice. Only for the IgM class was a significantly lower concentration found in the serum of splenectomized animals. This low concentration of IgM in the blood of splenectomized mice was caused by a failure of the remaining organs to compensate completely for the removal of the quantitatively important population of IgM-producing plasma cells in the spleen. Nevertheless, the number of precursors of IgM-producing plasma cells in bone marrow and lymph nodes and their ability to differentiate into IgM-producing plasma cells was not diminished by splenectomy. Probably the spleen provides a highly efficient environment for the differentiation into IgM-producing plasma cells.

By investigating the synergistic ability of bone marrow cells and thymus cells from neonatally splenectomized mice it was found that these cells were fully capable of co-operating in the adoptive plaque-forming cell response to sheep red blood cells (SRBC).

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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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