A receptor for the third component of complement in the human renal glomerulus

Abstract

In the course of studying the nature of mononuclear cellular infiltrates in tissue sections of human kidney it was noted that indicator sheep erythrocytes densely coated with the third component of complement (C3) specifically adhered to all of the glomeruli in the tissue sections. The deposition of complement (C) within the glomerulus is a feature of many immunologically related renal diseases (1,2), yet the precise mechanism by which C is deposited remains unexplained. We feel that this observation, suggesting the presence of a receptor for C, is, therefore, of particular interest.