Human rheumatoid factor crossidiotypes. I. WA and BLA are heat-labile conformational antigens requiring both heavy and light chains.

Evidence was obtained that both the WA and BLA crossidiotype (XId) groups are conformational antigens requiring both L and H chains and that with heat denaturation the antigens that define the XIds and antigen-binding activity are lost in parallel. In contrast, the primary structure-dependent crossreactive idiotype (CRI), PSL2, which is only weakly detected on native Wa and Bla monoclonal rheumatoid factors (mRFs), became prominently detected on the heated Wa and Bla mRFs. Heat denaturation may provide a simple method for distinguishing Ids determined by conformational antigen from primary structure-dependent Ids. In addition to heat denaturation, some acid conditions commonly used for preparation of RFs were also found to cause marked loss of Id antigen. The finding of PSL2-CRI on Bla mRF indicates that this Id is not unique to the WA XId.