![Sample our Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5944/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Medicine-Dentistry-Nursing-Allied-Health.jpg"})
Abstract
Diabetes-prone BB/OK rats aged 30 to 35 days were subjected to three sequential intrasplenic injections of unfractionated homogenate prepared from Langerhans' islets of newborn syngeneic BB/OK rats. Syngeneic islet antigen administration resulted in increased complement-dependent antibody-mediated cytotoxicity (C'AMC) to rat pancreatic islet cells in serum, compared to buffer-treated control animals as detected by 51Cr-release assay. However, the increase of anti-islet-cell cyto toxicity neither impaired glucose tolerance nor affected the incidence of diabetes and the age at manifestation. In contrast to BB/OK rats developing diabetes, animals remaining long-term normoglycaemic did not show an enhancement of cytotoxicity to islet cells within twelve days after the first islet antigen injection as revealed retrospectively.
In conclusion, humoral mediated anti-islet-cell cytotoxicity is not decisively involved in pancreatic β-cell destruction and promotion of diabetes development in BB/OK rats, but animals becoming diabetic seem to be characterized by a stronger immunological reactivity upon syngeneic islet antigen challenge as indicated by an increase of anti-islet C'AMC compared to long-term normoglycaemic rats.