EFFECT OF LITTER SIZE ON THE INDUCTION OF RUNT DISEASE IN MICE*

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The incidence of runt disease induced by the administration of C57BL spleen cells to newborn Swiss mice was significantly lower in small litters of 1 to 4 siblings than in large litters of 7 to 10 siblings. Discarding some of the siblings of large litters reduced the incidence of runt disease but it still remained higher than in originally small litters. This indicated that while postnatal factors contributed to the inhibition of runt disease in small litters, this was mainly due to prenatal factors. It is suggested that the prenatal factor may be a higher immunologic maturity at birth of small litters, while the postnatal factor may be the provision of larger amounts of natural antibodies against C57BL cells to the individual siblings of small litters. No influence of litter size on the incidence of runt disease was found in mice of the RIII strain.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: