Because of their proximity to the coronary vein and thoracic duct, the paracardiac lymph nodes are liable to develop both venous and lymphatic congestion. The authors studied morphologic changes in the paracardiac lymph nodes in patients with portal hypertension.Paracardiac lymph nodes were obtained during surgery from 40 volunteer patients with esophageal varices due to schistosomal portal hypertension (29 nonbleeders, 11 bleeders). Paracardiac lymph nodes from 10 volunteer patients having surgery for correction of incisional hernia served as controls.The main histologic difference found in this study was the lower incidence of necrosis in nonbleeders. This indicates the possible role played by inadequate lymphatic drainage of the excessive lymph produced by the congested varicesbearing area in the bleeder.
Good and his colleagues have suggested that vertebrate immunity may have evolved into a two-component system: a thymus-dependent component primarily regulating cellular immunity, and a bursal-dependent system primarily regulating humoral immunity. These workers proposed that such structures as the tonsils, appendix and Peyer's patches may be the primary or central mammalian analogue of the avian bursa of Fabricius, whose removal causes ablation of humoral antibody responses in birds. They found that extirpation of gut-associated lymphoepithelial tissue in rabbits, followed by irradiation, produced deficiencies of specific antibody and immunoglobulin formation (1–3).
We have been interested in defining a possible role for Peyer's patches in humoral immunity. We studied first the immune response of spleen and Peyer's patch cells in 1-month-old C57BL/6 mice stimulated with intraperitoneal (i.p.) injections of 2.5 × 108 sheep red blood cells (SRBC).
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