In article <26nk7h$cfr at post.its.mcw.edu> tsiepman at post.its.mcw.edu (Thomas
Siepmann) writes:
>>When I was an undergrad. at U. of I. (C-U) a few years ago our prof. read
>an article to us about a group that had elicited an IgG response to a
>smell in rats. First, they immunized the rats while the smelly substance
>was present. After doing this repeated times, eventually they got a
>specific immune response to the smell alone. Was wondering if anyone had
>read this journal article and knew where I could find it.
>>About 5 years ago when I was working at the University of Manitoba, there was
some work being done on Pavlovian conditioning of an NK cell response. I don't
remember the details, but it was similar to what you describe. The smell was
wintergreen. It seems to me there was also a tactice stimulus (rubbing the
rat's stomach or something). The injection was polyI:C, an interferon gamma
inducer which in turn stimulates NK cell activity.
Sounded crazy, but actually seemed to be working (despite the fact that the
psychology students that were involved in doing a lot of the work didn't know a
pipetman from their........). Anyways, I don't know where this was published,
but I think it was. One of the authors would be Arnold H. Greenberg, so you
could try a medline search. The year would be around 1988.
I realize that this is somewhat different than eliciting a specific IgG
response, but this paper may reference the one you're thinking of. Anyways, I
doubt if the smell actually <elicited> the response. The initial immunizations
would be responsible for that. The smell probably just causes stimulation of
the pre-existing plasma cells via some sort of bizzaro mechanism, resulting in
increased production of the ab and increased levels of the specific IgG in the
serum.
Hope this helps.
Eric
