Effects of long-term procainamide therapy on immunoglobulin synthesis

✍ Scribed by Chia-Li Yu; Morris Ziff

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1985
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 862 KB
• Volume: 28
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-3591
• DOI: 10.1002/art.1780280307

✦ Synopsis

Procainamide is a potent inducer of autoantibodies. In order to evaluate the immunologic effects of this drug in vivo, 23 cardiac disease patients who had received procainamide for at least 6 months and an equal number of matched cardiac disease control subjects were studied, and percentage of circulating T cell subsets, concanavalin A-induced suppressor cell activity, and pokeweed mitogen-stimulated generation of immunoglobulin-secreting cells was quantitated. There was no significant difference between patient and control groups in the percentage of T cell subsets defined by OKT4 and OKT8 monoclonal antibodies or in concanavalin A-induced suppressor cell activity. The numbers of pokeweed mitogen-induced immunoglobulinsecreting cells were markedly decreased in the patient group, as measured by the protein A-augmented reverse hemolytic plaque assay (3,000 +-644, mean f SEM in patients versus 10,826 f 1,529, mean f SEM in control subjects, P < 0.005). Removal of the adherent cell fraction did not improve the hyporesponsiveness. When B and T cell fractions of 6 patients were mixed with