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The Nature of "Complete" Rh Antisera as Revealed by Antiglobulin Augmentation¹

From the Department of Research, Los Angeles Childrens Hospital, and the Department of Pediatrics, University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles

Abstract

Introduction. It is widely accepted that a saline agglutinating Rh antiserum exhibiting a prozone in its saline titration, or a significantly higher incomplete antibody titer, or both, contains "univalent"³ as well as the more apparent "bivalent" antibodies (1–5). The lack of these phenomena in a saline agglutinating serum may denote a total absence of incomplete antibodies. It may, however, indicate that the incomplete antibodies, present in a relatively reduced concentration, are masked by the saline agglutinating antibodies. Under the latter circumstances, the masked incomplete antibodies have been exposed with the use of technics not ordinarily available or practiced in the routine immunology laboratory.

Diamond and Abelson (6) heated saline agglutinating Rh antiserum to 56°C for 15 hours and mixed the resultant material with control Rh antisera known to cause agglutination in saline. In most cases, the heated sera showed distinct inhibition of the agglutinating property of the control antisera.

Footnotes

¹ This work was supported in part by a grant from Lederle Laboratories Division, of the American Cyanamid Co. and in part from the Leukemia Research Foundation of California.

³ The term "univalent" is employed merely in a theoretical sense to distinguish antibodies also known as "incomplete", "albumin", "blocking", and "cryptagglutinoid" from those known as "bivalent", "saline", "complete", etc.

² Markle Scholar in Medical Science.