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Intravenously injected monoclonal rat IgA is first removed from rat serum at a very fast rate (93% in 4 h), then at a much slower rate (t/2 = 24 h). The rapid initial disappearance is thought to be due in part to secretion into rat bile. This was demonstrated by rat liver perfusions with semisynthetic medium containing diluted (1:200) IgA myeloma serum. During perfusion, the cannulated bile displayed increasingly high levels of this IgA, with a bile to medium ratio of 38 after 1 h of perfusion; at the same time, there was a 40% drop of the rat monoclonal IgA concentration in the medium, which was not observed for rat IgG2a and albumin. All of the monoclonal biliary IgA was bound to secretory component. The rat liver is thus able to actively secrete a monoclonal IgA from the circulation into bile against a strong concentration gradient.
Jackson et al. (Wed,) studied this question.