These results underline the necessity to determine usual values of immunoglobulin isotypes specifically in the Caspian miniature horses and can be directly useful for veterinarian clinicians.
M. ZAMANI-AHMADMAHMUDI1 *, N. ATYABI1 , N. BEIGI BOROJENI1 , A.M. MOHAMADI2
1 Department of clinical sciences, faculty of veterinary medicine, Tehran University, P.O. box: 14155-6453, Tehran, IRAN.
2 Khojir animal station research, P.O. box: 14897-7578, Tehran, IRAN.*Corresponding author: mohamad.clinical@gmail.com
SUMMARY
The aim of the study is to investigate, for the first time, the concentrations of the various immunoglobulin isotypes in healthy Caspian miniature horses, which is likely the ancestor of all modern breeds of hot-blooded horses and today reared in United States, England, New Zealand, Australia and Iran.
For that, the specific Ig concentrations were measured using a single radio-immuno-diffusion method (VMRD kits) in 30 healthy Caspian horses after verifying absence of agammaglobulinemia by serum protein electrophoresis.
After normalisation of the concentration distributions by a logarithmic transformation, the usual ranges of Ig isotype concentrations determined in the Caspian horse were 28.45 ± 13.20 g/L for IgG, 3.68 ± 0.32 g/L for IgG (T) (one of the IgG subclasses routinely measured for practical purposes), 0.66 ± 0.29 g/L for IgM and 0.92 ± 0.70 for Ig A.
Compared with literature data, the IgG concentrations were higher than in other horse breeds or in ponies whereas the IgA and IgM concentrations were markedly depressed.
These results underline the necessity to determine usual values specifically in the Caspian miniature horses and can be directly useful for veterinarian clinicians.
Keywords: Caspian miniature horse, serum, immunoglobulin isotypes, usual values.
Results
As shown in Table I, the total serum protein concentrations varied from 74.00 g/L to 97.00 g/L in the investigated Caspian horses and the γ-globulin proportions were comprised between 22.38% and 62.88%, leading to total immunoglobulin concentrations ranged between 15.00 g/L to 61.00 g/L. None animal has presented an agammaglobulinemia.
The concentrations of the different Ig isotypes in Caspian healthy horses were summarized in the Table II.
The main Ig isotype was the IgG which roughly represented 94.5% of the immunoglobulins, while the proportions of IgM and of IgA were approximately 2.2% and 3.1% respectively.
In addition, 50% and 25% of the Caspian investigated horses exhibited Ig G concentrations higher than 24.50 g/L and than 44.00 g/L respectively.
Whereas the distribution of the IgG isotype was markedly large, those of the IgA and particularly IgM isotypes were narrower with 50% of values around the median value which maximally differed from each other by 0.94 g/L and 0.43 g/L respectively.