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. 1974 Apr;55(2):177–186.

A Comparison of Thymus Dependent and Thymus Independent Antibody Responses Made by Different Numbers and Populations of Immunocompetent Cells

I E Addison
PMCID: PMC2072519  PMID: 4151709

Abstract

Mice pretreated with cyclophosphamide were reconstituted with syngeneic cells. Their response to pneumococcal polysaccharide type III (S III) was considered to measure the activity of transferred B cells and the response to sheep or horse erythrocytes (SRBC and HRBC) that of B and T cells.

The populations of donor cells used contained different proportions of T and B cells; their response to S III ranked in the order, spleen from thymectomized donors > normal spleen > lymph node; the reverse obtained in the responses to erythrocytes. Thus, lymph node suspensions made the most antibody to thymus dependent antigens though they contained the least B cell activity. It is concluded that T cells, rather than initiating, amplify the response of B cells to these antigens.

Spleen cells were used to obtain dose response curves for each antigen. A ten-fold increase in cell dose increased the response to S III three-fold, to SRBC ten-fold, and to HRBC twenty-fold or more. These differences follow if amplification of the B cell response increases with T cell dose, and is greater for HRBC than SRBC.

It is argued that agents which alter the proportions of B and T cells equally, may not affect thymus dependent and independent responses equally.

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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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