The Effect of Prenatal Irradiation on Growth of Immunologic Competence

摘要

The broad objective of the project is to determine the effects of prenatal x-irradiation on the postnatal growth of lymphoreticular tissue, humoral antibody production and cellular immunity. Up to the age of 12 weeks the body weights of prenatally irradiated (150R, 17i day of gestation) Blab/c males are consistently lower than those of control animals. The females do not show a consistent pattern. Some differences in growth of lymphoreticular tissues (spleen, thymus, and mesenteric lymph node, liver) were observed but are not attributable to differences in cell number. A comparison of humoral antibody response (anti sheep red blood cell, Jerne plaque assays) shows that 7.0 week old radiated males achieve peak response a day later than the controls.