[The polyclonal nature of the immune response to xenobiotics and endobiotics]

The results of many experiments and clinical observations showed that each chemical agent and its metabolites introduced into or mobilized in the organism act, along with others, on the lymphoid cells obligatorily inducing a polyclonal immune response directed at restoration of the chemism of the internal medium. The specificity of the response is attested by the absence of intensification of the immune rosette formation phenomenon in administration of a chemical agent of a different structure into the animal, as well as when erythrocytes, sensibilized by some other chemical agent not introduced or freed in the organism is used in the reaction. That an excess of the agent saturates the receptors of cells only specific of its clone testifies to the monospecificity of each of the lymphocyte clones. Our data are in agreement in this respect with one of the main postulates of immunology on the narrow specialization and strict manner of clone formation of the lymphocyte B-pool. Our data may possibly set the way for understanding the phenomenon of the polyclonal character of the immune response to various antigens and effects. We studied intensified immune responses specific of endobiotics, in exposure of the lymphocytes of animal organs to the effect fo PGA, tuberculin, antiglobulin sera, foreign protein, genetically foreign cells (sheep erythrocytes), microbial antigens and toxins. This, possibly, underlies the well known phenomenon of synthesis of nonspecific immunoglobulins in the organism in response to the effect of an antigen, the mechanism of which is still not clear.