In vivo and in vitro studies of the binding of antibody/dsDNA immune complexes to rabbit and guinea pig platelets.

The in vivo and in vitro binding of prepared antibody/dsDNA immune complexes to rabbit and guinea pig cellular blood components was examined. The in vitro binding in these two nonprimates was almost entirely due to platelets, and required homologous, intact complement; furthermore, no appreciable binding was observed for neutrophils, mononuclear cells, or erythrocytes at normal blood concentrations. The in vivo binding reaction occurred quite rapidly (less than 1 min for maximal binding) and the majority of the injected counts were cleared from the circulation in 3 to 5 min. Over this time period, however, a large fraction of the counts remaining in the circulation also remained bound to the animals' cells (presumably platelets), and this result was most pronounced for complement-fixing immune complexes prepared with high m.w. dsDNA. In vitro studies confirmed that immune complexes prepared with such dsDNA are rather slowly released from the animal platelets in the presence of homologous serum, and this result is in marked contrast to the considerably greater lability of bovine serum albumin/anti-bovine serum albumin immune complexes that are bound to complement receptors on animal and human cells. These observations suggest that the fate of immune-complexed dsDNA in the circulation may be very different from that of free dsDNA, and in the case of nonprimates may involve a platelet-mediated immune complex clearance mechanism analogous to the erythrocyte-mediated immune complex clearance mechanism which is believed to be operative in primates.