Summary
An attempt was made to correlate the adjuvant effects of bacterial endotoxins with a decline in serum complement activity. Rabbits were injected intravenously with sheep red cell stromas with or without endotoxins, and their serum complement activity was followed at various intervals. Serum complement activity was found to decline over a period of hours after the injection of adjuvant amounts of endotoxin, the most marked depression occurring 6 hr after injection. Possible mechanisms behind this effect of endotoxin on serum complement activity have been discussed.
Footnotes
Presented in part at the April, 1962 Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.
This work was supported by USPHS Research Grants No. AI-01452 and AI-03047.
