Presence of Antibody in Bile. ∗

Abstract

In the course of an investigation of various factors involved in gallstone formation, studies have been carried out on the presence of antibody in hepatic and gall-bladder bile, when demonstrable amounts of antibody were present in the serum.

Mongrel dogs from our animal house stock were used in these experiments. The procedure consisted, first in determining the agglutinin titer in the serum to staphylococcus (S. aureus hemolyticus), streptococcus (S. fecalis), B. coli and B. typhosum (flagellate and aflagellate strains). The dogs were then immunized with a polyvalent vaccine, containing the above organisms to a concentration of about three billion per cc. Injection of the vaccine in the course of the immunization was as follows: (Table I.)

Twenty-five days after the beginning of immunization, the dogs were operated on and a sample of the gall-bladder bile removed, after which cholecystectomy was performed. The common duct was doubly intubated after the method of Elman and McMaster 1 so that specimens of sterile hepatic bile could be recovered. At the same time the antibody titer of the serum was determined.

Numerous studies conducted in this laboratory on the gall-bladder bile and hepatic bile of normal dogs, which are uninfected and show no previous evidence of biliary tract damage, have shown that no significant agglutinin can be demonstrated (a table of normal titers has been omitted, therefore, to conserve space).