Word: globulins
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...test his theory, Riggio has been injecting gamma globulin from human placentas, which are usually discarded after delivery, into patients at the hospital's Rogosin Kidney Center. He hopes that the placental extract will transfer blocking antibodies into them. That then might encourage acceptance of new organs. A positive sign: when Riggio examined long-term transplant survivors at the center, he found that their acceptance of kidney grafts somehow appeared to have been enhanced by a biochemical mechanism similar to that postulated in pregnant women...
Once, the only treatment for Rh disease was to replace virtually the entire fetal blood supply with massive transfusions before or shortly after birth. Now prevention is possible in the form of a blood extract called Rh immune globulin. Developed independently by research teams in England and the U.S. nearly a decade ago, the globulin acts as a vaccine to curtail the Rh-negative woman's production of antibodies and greatly reduces the risks to future Rh-positive children...
...John Gorman, one of the American researchers, warns that the vaccine works only if the woman is not already immune to Rh factor. He recommends that the globulin be given automatically to every woman within 72 hours of her first delivery, abortion or miscarriage if tests show that she is Rh-negative and the baby is Rh-positive. Says he: "You've got to get in during the time that the window is open...
...vaccine. But in Italy, the vaccine is now given to only 30%, while in Venezuela, only 5% of Rh-negative mothers get the shots. Even in the U.S., where 85% are now protected, the gap is still significant. Only half of the women now undergoing abortions receive Rh immune globulin after their operations...
Assuming that antibodies, like most other proteins, are composed of chains of amino acids, Edelman set out to identify the arrangement and composition of the antibody molecules. In 1969, he completed a gamma-globulin model showing the molecule to be made up of 19,996 atoms grouped together in amino-acid building blocks. His findings coincided with those of Porter, showing that the antibody molecule is composed of a double pair of chains, two "light" ones forming the branches of the Y, and two "heavy" ones that make up the trunk. After establishing that antibodies have some flexible amino-acid...