The Morphologic Basis of Antibody Formation Development during the Neonatal Period

This is the detailed study of a baby who proved to be immunologically normal although born of a woman with acquired agammaglobulinemia. A serial study of the concentration of gammaglobulin in the blood of the infant revealed it to remain below 11 mg/100 ml until the sixth week of life. Gammaglobulin then began to accumulate rapidly in the serum and subsequently rose to normal levels. Antibody did not appear in the infant's serum until the sixty-seventh day of life, despite intensive antigenic stimulation at weekly intervals during the first 2 months of life. Serial examination of the bone marrow and lymph nodes showed that plasma cell production was not present during the neonatal period, but developed concurrently with the capacity to synthesize gammaglobulin and antibody. Further studies were done of the normal sequence of events in the production of plasma cells in the marrow and lymph nodes during early infancy and the effect of intense antigenic stimulation on plasmacytosis. This unique opportunity to study the formation of gammaglobulin in relation to plasma cells in the marrow and tissues, without the interference of passively-transferred gammaglobulin and antibodies, in a normal newborn provides considerable fundamental information.