Summary
A healthy 22‐year‐old woman was noted to have erythrocytes of the Pk phenotype: a strong Pk antigen, no detectable P antigen and anti‐P antibody in her serum. Her erythrocytes contained four to six times as much Pk glycolipid (globotriaosylceramide or CTH) and approximately half as much P glycolipid (globotertraosylceramide or globoside) as normal red cells. The structures of CTH and globoside were characterized by analysis of permethylated sugars and complement fixation in addition to chromaographic mobility and sugar composition. Inasmuch as the erythrocytes of two Pk individuals that were analysed previously (Marcus et al., 1976) contained no detectable globoside, these abnormalities appear o represent a new phenotype in the P blood group system.
C3H mice were subjected to a whole-body dose of 530 rads of mixed gammaneutron radiation delivered at a rate of approximately 20 rads/min. The blood plasma concentration of protein-bound carbohydrates, as neutral hexoses, was estimated daily after irradiation. Ultrastructural architecture of liver tissue taken from irradiated animals in extremis was compared with that of survivors and fed and starved unirradiated controls. Among the radiation-induced differences observed in the hepatocytes were moderate to marked dilatation of the rough endoplasmic reticulum, increased Golgi activity, and rounding of the mitochondria with a decrease in numbers of mitochondrial granules. These alterations, together with other differences noted, were correlated with the increased plasma concentration of proteinbound neutral hexoses uniformly found in animals which succumb to radiation injury.
Total protein-bound carbohydrates (PBC), as neutral hexoses, were quantified in the plasma of C3H mice as a function of time relative to whole-body exposure to either monoenergetic 14-MeV neutrons or mixed gamma-neutron radiations delivered at a rate of approximately 20 rads/ min. The reported doses, 365 to 530 rads, were those which yielded survivors under the stress of daily bleeding. A striking difference was observed between those radiosensitive animals which died after exposure and the more resistant individuals which, although exposed to identical doses, survived the observation period. In the former population, the PBC concentration rose to high values and remained elevated until the death of the animal. By contrast, the survivors showed little change in PBC, deviating only slightly from their preirradiation base-line values. The mean preirradiation PBC concentration in the mice which survived 30 days, while statistically significant (p < 0.01) only at the lowest reported dose, was consistently lower than that of those which died during the same period. The magnitude of the difference was inversely related to the radiation dose. The refinement of these data to provide an index to radiosensitivity prior to and prognosis after irradiation in otherwise healthy individuals is proposed.
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