Tuesday, June 26, 2012

What are Cold Agglutinins

Agglutinate comes from "ad+glue" means to cause to adhere as with glue, or to clump together.
Agglutinin, is any substance that is capable of causing agglutination of a particular antigen.
In blood, antibodies are agglutinins, and red blood cells (of the wrong blood group), bacteria form the antigen.

There is an auto immune disease in which circulating abnormal antibodies, usually IgM, directed against one's own red blood cells are abnormally present.
This causes hemolysis, anemia, and it is autoimmune (autoimmune hemolytic anemia)

There is maximum action at temperatures lower than body temperature and that's why it's called cold agglutinins

(This is against warm agglutinins in Warm Antibody Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia, in which there is a more complex interaction through which IgG antibodies make macrophages bite off the membrane of RBCs turning them into spherocytes which are destroyed in spleen. Maybe since there is more number of interactions taking place, it's more efficient in higher temperatures (like chemical reactions) )

No comments:

Post a Comment