Histamine release with differing antigen-antibody reactions

Abstract

T HE frequency with which histamine release is attributed to antigen-antibody reaction has encouraged the concept that different types of antigen-antibody reaction, without discrimination as to type, result in histamine release. General statements and inferences to this effect are found in current reference works on the subject.l Measurably differing results of such reactions are assumed to be explained by either a variation in the rate of hi&amine release or a difference in the reactivity of tissues responding to the histamine released. Thus, many clinical features of certain syndromes and reactions have been attribut,ed t,o alleged widely varying results of the action of histamine. Two experimental models have been shown to be associated with histamine release accompanying antigen-antibody reactions. The first, which borrows its materials from a clinical syndrome involving an antigen-antibody reaction, is in vitro release of histamine from blood cells of atopically-sensitive human beings upon exposure of such cells to the appropriate antigen. This is exemplified by the release of histamine from the blood of ragweed-sensitive individuals upon the addition of ragweed antigen23 3 or from other sensitive human tissue, such as bronchiolar muscle.4 The second model involves histamine release from the tissue of experimentally sensitized animals by the in vitro exposure of such tissue to the sensitizing antigen. The Schultz-Dale reaction may represent the simplest form of this sort of histamine release, although the chopped guinea pig lung experiment devised by Mongar and Schild,5 and used by a number of other workers, is the setup in which release of histamine is clearly demonstrated. A summary of features of these two models and their possible basic relationship, as indicated by similar physical and chemical characteristics, has recently been published.6 Awareness of these conditions of histamine release has stimulated a search for other antigen-anbibody reactions which might release histamine. This paper is a report of such an inquiry which is limited by the experimental confines of the in vitro human blood model. Included are attempts to demonstrate histamine release : (a) with tuberculin as the antigen to which tuberculin-sen-