Physico-Chemical Characterization of the Cold Auto-Antibodies of Acquired Haemolytic Anaemia.

Cold agglutinins were separated from the sera of eleven patients suffering from the cold-antibody type of acquired haemolytic anaemia by the dissociation of the specific antigen-antibody complexes. The electrophoretic mobility of the cold antibody was found to correspond to that of γ_l globulin in each case. Ultracentrifugal studies carried out on eluted cold antibodies prepared from the sera of seven patients demonstrated that the antibodies were macromolecules (S_20,w∼18.1). In one instance the sedimentation coefficient of the cold antibody was demonstrated to be similar to that of electrophoretically separated ‘γ₁ globulin’ prepared from the same serum, indicating their identical physical state. The results of treating the sera of nineteen patients with the cold-antibody type of acquired haemolytic anaemia with mercapto-ethanol further confirmed that the cold antibodies were all macromolecules, whether derived from idiopathic cases or cases secondary to some other known disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]