The transmission of high molecular weight breakdown products of protein across the gut of suckling and adult rats

Abstract

That animals could be immunized by oral administration of soluble protein has been known since the turn of the century, when Uhlenhuth (1900) first reported the formation of circulating antibodies by rabbits which had been fed on egg albumin. So far as I am aware this is the first statement of the phenomenon. The subject has since lain in the literature, but seems to have escaped the text-books. There was a good deal of interest apparently in the first decade or two after its discovery, and a number of excellent contributions were made, but on the whole they have been ignored, and their important implications have not taken root, so that the work has seemed to be repeated from decade to decade. But now things seem to be changing. The conference on Coeliac Disease in 1974 may mark a turning point. I should like first to look at the phenomenon in animals, especially the rat, in the hope that we may discover in them models of human pathological processes.