| Summary: | The aims and related hypotheses of this thesis were: a) To develop an antibody test that could be used as a tool to examine the gut humoral immune response to bacteria of the gut flora. In order to develop the antibody test, various antigens were prepared from the bacterial cell wall and their biological potentials were examined with human and murine cell lines. These tests could be combined with studies of other facets of gut immunity for which methods were already available, in order to explore active immunity and tolerance in the mucosal and systemic compartments. b) To examine and compare humoral immunity in the gut and serum of immunologically normal people from Edinburgh and Dhaka, in order to establish and test the following hypotheses: 1. In view of the probable higher antigenic load from a potentially contaminated environment, there would be evidence of gut damage and inflammation in the healthy people of Dhaka, and thus high levels of IgA, compared to people in Edinburgh. 2. In the developing country, the drive of high levels of humoral responses to bacteria would have the additional effect that antibodies to other gut antigens, such as foods, would be absent or of low titre. By studying patients with chronic colitis (inflammatory bowel disease), it might be possible to investigate how chronic gut inflammation affects specific antibodies and to identify the sources of gut antibodies, ie. serum-derived or locally produced. Prompted by the case of a patient with hypereosinophilic syndrome, high gut IgA concentrations and ulcerative colitis, the stimuli for eosinophil migration into the gut and eosinophil activation were examined and possible interaction with the regulation of humoral immunity investigated.
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