Immunoglobulins in aqueous humour and iris from patients with endogenous uveitis and patients with cataract.

Abstract

The scarcity of aqucous humour and uveal tissues from living patients has hampered studies on the immunological aspects of human eye diseases. There are many autopsy studies investigating the niature and amount of proteins in human aqueous, but it is known that the composition of aqueous humour changes very rapidly after death so that the validity of the results of these autopsy studies on the composition of aqueous humour is in doubt (Hemmingsen and Other, I967; Dieckhues, I967; Allansmith, Whitney, McClellan, and Newman, I973). Application of radial immunodiffusion (Mlancini, Carbonara, and Heremans, I965) has enabled us to estimate quantitatively IgG, IgMl, and IgA in the aqueous humour obtained before surgery from patients suffering from: (i) Active chronic endogenous uveitis, (ii) Narrow-angle glaucoma with no active inflammation, (iii) Senile cataracts.