Faculty Bibliography

We performed infrared pupillography on 10 patients with familial dysautonomia. Pupillary constriction to light and accommodation was normal. There was no evidence for light-near dissociation, and tonic responses were not observed. Dilatation in darkness was normal. Ocular application of dilute pilocarpine produced miosis in all patients. Supersensitivity of the pupil to muscarinic agents in familial dysautonomia is unlikely to be explained by parasympathetic denervation. Possible explanations for this phenomenon include diminished lacrimation and corneal ulcerations

Spleen leukocytes from rats and mice immunized against mouse 2.5S nerve growth factor (NGF) and peripheral blood leukocytes from rabbits hyper-immunized against the same antigen were fused with the mouse plasmacytoma P3X63Ag8. Hybridomas were screened by immunological assays (micro-complement fixation test and solid phase radioimmunoassay) for production of antibodies that reacted with NGF. Significant variations were seen between culture fluids from different hybrid cells. In addition, most but not all hybridoma antibodies that reacted immunologically with NGF prevented neurite outgrowth from 8-day chick embryo sensory ganglia explants after binding to NGF. These results suggest that the hybridoma antibodies produced by the different clones react with different antigenic sites on the NGF molecule