Heart Muscle Antibodies in Rheumatic Fever and Other Diseases*

Patterns of Naturally Occurring Circulating Antibodies to Rat Tissue Antigens in the Rat

“…Anti-kidney and anti-heart antibodies are demonstrable in 3% and 4.5% of un selected sera of healthy individuals, respectively [16,25]. Indeed, it has been suggested that a degree of autoimmunity is a normal state, which is of importance in the maintenance of health [13].…”

The Cardiac Auto-Immune System

“…The standard deviation of the latter rate was ± 12 in 48 individual rabbit cultures. 2 Antisera. Rabbit antisera against whole homogenized rabbit heart tissue were described and analyzed in a previous publication [8], as were the rabbit antisera to rat, guinea pig and human heart.…”

“…The detection of circulating cardiac auto-antibodies in man has been observed repeatedly [e.g. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7], but there is presently no data available as to whether the human cardiac auto-immune response may be comparably complex to that seen in our laboratory for the rabbit [8,9], and the rat [40]. Should the human cardiac auto-immune system be similar, it is reasonable to assume by analogy, that such auto-antibodies often would be without cytotoxic or pathological significance.…”

“…Indeed, in many studies, a relatively high proportion of patients with such heart auto-antibodies did not appear to have significant related cardiac disturbances [c.g. 2,4,7]. It is possible that a certain number of individuals may possess additional antibodies with cytotoxic activities, as is clearly the case in auto immune thyroiditis [e.g.…”

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7], as well as in experimental ani mals immunized with cardiac tissue [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. Although cardiac lesions have been correlated to some extent with such antibodies in man [1,2,6,15], as well as in animals [14,15], their precise role in patho genesis is not clear. In recent studies from our laboratory, the cardiac auto-immune system in rabbits immunized with rabbit heart was shown to be surprisingly complex, at least 5 distinct cardiac antigens being capable of evoking auto-immune responses in a single animal [8,9].…”