Infectious Agammaglobulinemia: Suppressor T Cells with Specificity for Individual Immunoglobulin Classes

Abstract

Immunoregulatory cells with potent suppressive effects on immunoglobulin or specific antibody production have been described in many experimental systems. In the chicken, bone marrow cells from adult birds rendered agammaglobulinemic by bursectomy and irradiation at hatching will induce agammaglobulinemia in recipients when transplanted into normal adult chickens of the same strain (1). This “infectious agammaglobulinemia” is induced by donor suppressor T cells which appear in the donor birds in detectable quantities by about 10 weeks of age. Suppressor cells can be demonstrated in spleen, thymus and peripheral blood in addition to bone marrow. The immunodeficiency which develops in the recipient chickens is characterized by their failure to produce specific antibody after challenge with any of several thymic dependent or thymic independent antigens, the rapid disappearance of existing serum IgG, IgA and IgM, the persistence of an intact bursa of Fabricius, and the persistence of a normal number of B lymphocytes in the spleen of these birds at least until after serum immunoglobulin has become undetectable (2, 3, 4).