Antibody Production in Pyridoxin-Deficient Rats

Stoerk & Eisen (1946) and Stoerk, Eisen & John (1947) reported that pyridoxindeficient rats immunized with sheep erythrocytes developed serum-antibody (haemagglutinin) levels far below those of inanition control rats and of rats fed a complete diet ad lib.Axelrod, Carter, McCoy & Geisinger (1947), using human erythrocytes as an antigenic stimulus, obtained similar results.It seemed of interest to attempt to confirm these findings and to use not only sheep erythrocytes but also a killed culture of a pathogenic organism, Bacterium typhosum.Further, as Stoerk et al. (1947.) reported a striking reduction in the number of fixed and circulating lymphocytes in pyridoxindeficient rats, it seemed worth studying the effect of pyridoxin deficiency on lymphoid tissue in the rat, particularly as the work of White & Dougherty (1946) indicated the importance of the lymphocyte in antibody formation by virtue of the elaboration of y-globulin. METHODS Diet and management of ratsHooded Lister Institute rats (Rowett Institute strain) of both sexes were used.The animals were weaned and maintained on the synthetic diet shown in Table I .Preliminary studies indicated that a ,rat fed on the pyridoxin-deficient diet failed to grow as rapidly, owing to anorexia, as a litter-mate receiving the same diet with pyridoxin.Any differences, e.g. in antibody titres or thymus weights, between a pyridoxin-deficient rat and a fully supplemented rat might thus be attributable not only to pyridoxin deficiency but also to inanition.Inanition is not, of course, a specific feature of pyridoxin deficiency and occurs, for example, in deficiency of riboflavin, aneurin and pantothenic acid.Inanition controls were therefore desirable and were used throughout this work, the paired-weighing or paired-feeding technique being used.Each experiment in the present series involved the use of several trios or quartets of litter-mate weanling rats of the same sex and approximately the same weight, the animals in each trio or quartet being arranged thus : rat no.I , fed the experimental diet ad lib.with all vitamin supplements, rat no. 2 , fed the diet ad lib.with all vitamin supplements except pyridoxin, rat no. 3, paired-weighed with rat no. 2 but given pyridoxin; rat no. 4, if used, paired-fed with rat no. 2 but given pyridoxin.The animals were housed in individual cages with wide wire-screened bases and had unlimited access to water.The B-complex vitamins (Table I), except choline, were