The flow of blood to lymph nodes and its relation to lymphocyte traffic and the immune response.

The blood flow to individual lymph nodes of sheep and rabbits has been determined with 85Sr-labeled microspheres. A popliteal node of the sheep received 0.014% of the cardiac output and a comparable node in the rabbit 0.011%. A sheep lymph node weighing 1 g received an average of 24 ml/h of blood. It was calculated that there was a highly selective removal of lymphocytes by the node and that an equivalent to one in every four lymphocytes that entered a normal lymph node migrated out of the blood, through the substance of the node, and into the efferent lymph. During the immune response to either allogeneic lymphocytes or tuberculin, the blood flow to sheep lymph nodes, even without considering the increase in node weight, increased an average of fourfold. During the primary immune response in the rabbit to keyhole limpet hemocyanin, the blood flow increased threefold. The increase in blood flow preceded the antigen-induced increase in lymphocyte traffic recorded in the efferent lymph. The early phase of increased blood flow was considered to be due to hyperemia, whereas the latter phase had a significant angiogenesis component. It was calculated that an equivalent to 60% of the entire mobilizable pool of lymphocytes could pass through an average lymph node in the blood during an immune response lasting 5 days.