Læknablaðið : fylgirit - 01.05.1978, Síða 139

TABLE I
PREVALENCE OF ANTIBODIES REACTING WITH CAUDATE AND SUBTHALAMIC NUCLEI
IN COMPATATIVE GROUPS OF NORMALS AND PATIENTS STUDIED
I
Group Studied
I. Normal Controls
No positive (%)
No studied
children 0/24, (0)
adults 1/31+ (3.2)
Streptococcal Patients.
A) rheumatic carditis 7/50 (14.0)
rheumatic chorea 14/30 (46.6)
B) post-streptococcal 1/19 + (5.2)
glomerulonephritis -
C) streptococcal pharyngitis 0/8 (0)
Non- -streptococcal Disease
A) Connective Tissue Disease
systemic lupus erythematosus 2/27 + (7.4)
adult rheumatoid arthritis 0/10 (0)
juvenile rheumatoid arthritis 2/28+ (7.1)
B) Neurological Disease
multiple sclerosis 0/21 (0)
Strokes, Parkinson's disease, amytrophic lateral sclerosis, peripheral neuropathy 0/15 (0)
C) Miscellaneous Diseases
(pneumonia, Hodkin's
disease, cirrhosis, myo- cardial infarctions) l/20+ (5.0)
+ mean titer of all positive reactions in miscellaneous
control tested was 1 or present in undiluted serum only.
immunoglobulin classes revealed that in all
instances the antibodies involved were of the IgG
class. IgG was also separated from selected,
positive sera by ion exchange chromatography
and thereafter digested with pepsin. The re-
sulting F (ab')2 fragments of IgG, that is the
antibody reactive site of the molecule, showed
staining with subthalamic and caudate nuclei to
the same extent as the corresponding whole serum,
confirming that the reactions were true antibody
binding and not, for example, non-immunologic
binding of the Fc part of the IgG molecule to the
tissue.
Figure 1, shows an example of the neuronal
staining of the caudate nucleus using a positive
serum from a patient with chorea. The cyto-
plasmic staining, is confirmed by the yellow,
autofluorescent granules which represent
lipofuchsin known to be located in the cytoplasm
of neuronal cells. To exclude the possibility
that the staining was due to antinuclear antibodies,
the sera were also tested on liver sections, how-
ever, allt the rheumatic fever sera, from patients
with chorea as well as with carditis, were nega-
tive. Table n shows the relative intensity of the
staining in different central nervous tissues. The
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