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Reply to the Letter of Dr. G. W. Warr

Laboratory of Microbial Immunity National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases National Institutes of Health Bethesda, Maryland 20014

Abstract

I wish to make two points in reply to the letter of Dr. G. W. Warr. First, the work of Warr et al. (1) hardly provides support for the view that ALS-induced enhancement of the antibody response to Type III pneumococcal polysaccharide (SSS-III) is demonstrable by using indicator erythrocytes sensitized with filtrates from cultures of pneumococci. In this paper, data are presented to indicate that treatment with ALS results in about a 3-fold increase in number of PFC detected. However, this is also accompanied by about a 3-fold increase in spleen weight and the spleen cell count. This is not ALS-induced enhancement, as described in our previous studies (reviewed in 2); rather, the increased numbers of PFC found, which may not be specific for SSS-III in the first place, is due entirely to splenomegaly. Under such circumstances, the failure of thymocytes to reverse this effect only serves to show that thymocytes are unable to abrogate this splenomegaly.