Haemolysin Responses to Sheep Erythrocytes in Neonatally Thymectomized Swiss Mice

Abstract

NEONATAL thymectomy has been shown to be followed, under certain experimental conditions, by depression of immune responses^1–4. Does neonatal thymectomy depress the primary response to a greater extent than the secondary response, or is a greater degree of immunological depression found in the secondary response ? The answer to this question is of importance when attempting to describe the relationship between the activity of the thymus and the development of the antibody response. Hess et al.⁵ have reported that the secondary response was decreased to a greater extent than the primary following neonatal thymectomy and have recently confirmed this conclusion⁶. The present communication is concerned with a different experimental system which, in contrast to work of Hess et al., has given a clear demonstration that neonatal thymectomy affects the primary response to a far greater extent than the secondary response.