Inanition antibody response

In confirmation of previous findings, these studies have emphasized the failure of inanition to modify the antibody response. The lack of correlation between growth inhibition and suppression of antibody response was again apparent. This was strikingly evidenced in the thiamine and folic acid deficiencies. Thus, despite the more marked growth-inhibitory effect of the thiamine deficiency, the antibody response of the thiamine-deficient rats was much greater than that of the folic acid-deficient animals. 

The development of a method suitable for the study of antibody synthesis by individual cells has facilitated investigations of antibody synthesis at the cellular level (Jerne and Nordin, 1963). With this procedure, we have demonstrated a dramatic reduction in the number of antibody-forming cells in the spleens of pyridoxine-deficient rats immunized with sheep erythrocytes (Figure 6) (Kumar and Axelrod, 1968). This decreased cellular immune response was independent of the inanition associated with the deficiency and was... 

The diet intake and organ weights for this experiment are shown in Table I. The number of direct and indirect plaque forming cells (PFC) produced per spleen are shown in Table II, In this case the deficient mice produced only 32% as many direct plaques and 27% as many indirect plaques as did the control mice (Leucke et al., 1978). Note that in this instance inanition had no effect on ability of restricted mice to mount an antibody mediated response. Although inanition can contribute to loss of immune capacity in zinc deficient studies conducted for extended periods, this data demonstrates that zinc deficiency per se can cause substantial impairment of immunity in the absence of effects produced by reduced caloric intake. 

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