Observations on the Pregnant Rat Injected With Nephrotoxic Rabbit Anti-Rat Placenta Serum and Desoxycorticosterone Acetate

Abstract

In a previous report (1) Seegal and Loeb have described a series of experiments designed to test the idea that a toxemia of pregnancy may result from the action of injurious antibodies evoked by antigenic substances of placental origin. The injection of rabbit anti-rat placenta serum into pregnant rats regularly produced abortion, and, when these animals were observed over a subsequent period of 3 to 14 months, over 50 per cent of them developed chronic glomerulonephritis. However, since non-pregnant females, as well as males, given this serum developed nephritis with equal frequency, the chronic renal lesions could not be considered a manifestation of "toxemia of pregnancy," nor were any acute episodes suggesting this condition observed in the animals.Subsequent observations by Knowlton et al. (2) demonstrated that the administration of desoxycorticosterone acetate (DCA) in the presence of a liberal NaC1 intake enhances the renal hypertrophy and nephritis produced in rats by another cytotoxic serum; namely, rabbit anti-rat kidney serum. In addition, the aninmls so treated developed striking hypertension. In view of the fact that in the work of Seegal and Loeb (1), referred to above, no demonstrable effect of anti-placenta serum, other than abortion, occurred during gestation, the present experiments were planned to determine whether a toxemia of pregnancy might result if the serum were fortified by DCA and NaC1. E X P E R r M E N T A L