Changes Of Cellular Immune Function And Some Active Peptides And Their MRNA During Cold Adaptation Of Animals

How to enhance the body tolerance to cold surroundings is an important problem demanding prompt solution. Although many researchers of various fields have made an effort on this, little progress is made. So far, metablism regulation mechanisms during cold adaptation of human being and animals, especially immune functional regulation mechanism, are not clear. As many papers on this are contradictory, it keeps on wondering whether or not immune function is enhanced. Immune system(ImS) is part of network in all cold adaptation systems and closely relates to neuroendocrine system(NES), which has been verified by many research results. According to the complexity and importance of cellular immune function(CIF) during cold adaptation and the possible existence of an ImS-NES regular mechanism, we took male SD rats and male BALB/c inbred mice of cold adaptation(cold exposure groups: 0℃±2℃, control group: 25℃±3℃) for experimental animal models in order to study the regularity of changes in CIF during cold adaptation, the internal relations between ImS and NES, and effects of some active peptides and their mRNA changes in ImS—NES bidirection regulation cycle.Experimental results of murine spleen lymphocyte(LC) transforma-tion indicated by ~3H-TdR incorporation are as follows: in contrast with control group(group N), first in cold adaptation group(group C) there was obvious fluctuation of CIF because of transient stress to cold; afterwards the CIF gradually recovered to control level. From days 15 on, the CIF of group C remarkably enhanced. On days 15, LC transformation rate was increased by 20.66%(P<0.05), which implies the set-up of cold adaptation; on days 21 and 31,increased by 80.15% (P<0.05) and 40.36% (P<0.05), respectively. Later in the 2 to 6 months at continuing cold exposure, mice remained in the enhancing state of CIF and LC transformation rate kept higher than group N.Protein synthesis in LC indicated by ~3H-Leu incorporation was apparently increased at days 15 and stimulate rate was 101.47% (P< 0.05). SDS-PAGE autoradiograph of synthesis and secretion proteins in LC both demonstrated that after 2 weeks of cold exposure, proteins (MW 10KD-60KD) were enriched in not only quantity but also quanlity. This is identical with the results of LC transformation indicated by...