Studies in Non-Specific Complement Fixation. III. The Influence of Splenectomy and Anesthetics on the Non-Specific Complement Fixation Sometimes Shown by Normal Rabbit and Dog Sera

Abstract

This investigation was undertaken in the hope of obtaining some understanding of the part played by the spleen in hemolysis and of the mechanism by which the red cells develop an increased resistance to hemolytic agents after splenectomy. Antischkow1 has shown that the feeding of rabbits with cholesterin leads to an increased deposition of anisotropic fats in the spleen. Eppinger2 and King3 have found that dog's blood after splenectomy shows an increase in total fats and cholesterin and a decrease in unsaturated fatty acids. These observations naturally suggest that if the spleen has such an important influence on fat and lipoid metabolism, this mechanism may in some way be concerned in the changes which the spleen effects in the red cells. That the change in the red cells which is responsible for their increased resistance to hemolytic agents after splenectomy is a characteristic of the cells themselves and not a change in the serum, is indicated by the work of Karsner and Pearce,4 tho it must be admitted in view of King's results that it may be an antihemolytic power of the serum, dependent upon an increase in cholesterin content. As stated in the first paper5 of this series, several investigators have noted the occurrence in presumably normal rabbits of positive complement fixation with lipoidal antigens. The reason for this is not known, but we have evidence at hand that lipoidal substances