抄録
Antigenicity of human renal tubular brush border membrane has been well demonstrated in patients with membranous nephropathy and other type of glomerulonephritis. In these patients, renal tubular brush border antigen-antibody complexes deposit in glomeruli and the circulating immune complexes which consist of brush border antigen and the corresponding autoantibody are found in some of these patients.
The brush border antigen was solubilized from insoluble tubular segments by pronase digestion and isolated from the pronase-treated material by gel-filtration and disc-electrophoresis. The isolated brush border antigen was a glycoprotein with S20w value of 8. 4. The common antigen with brush border antigen distributed through the various organs, including liver, lung, intestine, etc. Some amount of antigen was also found in the blood and urine from healthy individuals and rats. The antigen located mainly at the sites with function of excretion or absorption in these organs.
When the brush border antigen isolated from rat kidney was emulsified with complete adjuvant and injected into rats, the circulating antibody against brush border antigen appeared 7-10 days after the injection and typical membranous nephropathy with subepithelial immune deposits of the capillary walls, developed 6-10 weeks after the injection.
These results obtained from the investigations of human and experimental glomerulonephritis confirm the auto-antigenicity of renal tubular brush border membrane.
