Anti-red blood cell autoantibodies induced in rat by Plasmodium berghei infection bind to a cross-reacting determinant present also in other cell types.

It has been previously shown that rats injected with red blood cells (RBC) infected with Plasmodium berghei make autoantibodies reacting with normal rat RBC as demonstrated by a staphylococcal protein A binding assay. In this study, the serum of the infected rats was found to contain also antibodies to several other types of rat cells (lymphoid, liver, and kidney cells and brain tissue) as well as against RBC and lymphoid cells of mice and sheep, but not of man. Rat, mouse, and sheep RBC and rat and mouse lymphocytes absorbed completely the antibodies to rat RBC, suggesting that a single, cross-reacting determinant might be involved in these reactions.