The release of histamine / by W.D.M. Paton.

  • Paton, William D. M.
Date:
1958
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The release of histamine / by W.D.M. Paton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/72 (page 91)
    in the rat; egg albumen, active chiefly in the rat; polyvinylpyroli- done, active in the dog; horse serum, active chiefly in the cat. To this group may also belong, although this is quite uncertain, the interesting anaphylatoxin obtained by incubating guinea-pig serum with agar or certain other substances. This has recently been restudied by Rocha e Silva and will be discussed in some detail, together with the other substances mentioned, in view of their widespread use and their interesting properties theoretically. Fourth is a number of surface active materials including lysolecithin (Feldberg, 1945), the detergent Tween 20 (.Krantz et ah, 1948) and bile salts (Schachter, 1952). These materials are highly sur¬ face active and have been shown under various conditions to be able to produce anaphylactoid reactions in the cat or in the dog and in some cases at least to produce a rise in histamine either in the blood of the whole animal or in the perfusate flowing from an isolated organ. Although the action of these substances is not clearly under¬ stood, their strong interfacial activity makes it probable that they function chiefly by lysing some limiting cell membrane. Although a substance like lysolecithin, which can be derived from natural sources, may be of physiological importance, the evidence for this is now less strong than when it was discussed by Feldberg in 1945. Fifth is the group of fairly simple monobasic compounds, of which the simple amine octylamine may be taken as the prototype. These were found by Mongar and Schild (1953), using minced guinea-pig lung, to be effective in releasing histamine when used in quite low dilutions. They are much less active when given to intact perfused organs, when injected intravenously, or when in¬ jected intradermally into intact skin (Feldberg and Mongar, 1954). The relationship between these compounds and the histamine liberators is of some importance and will be dealt with later. Histamine-Liberators Finally there are the substances which Macintosh and Paton (1947, 1949) termed histamine liberators. The earliest definite evidence for an action of this type was obtained by Anrep and his colleagues (Alam et ah, 1939) in a study of the effects of curare on muscle. They were able to show that curare injected into a perfused muscle caused the appearance of histamine in the venous blood; that injected into a whole animal rises in systemic plasma histamine