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Analysis of triiodothyronine and thyroxine-binding autoantibodies in chickens susceptible to autoimmune thyroiditis.

This report reveals a surprisingly high incidence of thyroid hormone (T3 and T4) autoantibodies (THA) and thyroglobulin autoantibodies in a closed flock of untreated Cornell strain (CS) White Leghorn chickens. This flock is closely related to the Obese strain chicken, which develops a severe spontaneous autoimmune thyroiditis. A sensitive electrophoretic autoradiographic assay for THA was developed. This assay was applied to the study of autoantibodies to T3 and T4 in the sera of adult female CS chickens. Of 109 females, 29.4% had antibodies to T3 and 18.4% had antibodies to T4. The incidence of thyroglobulin antibodies, determined by passive hemagglutination, was 15.6%. The presence of THA affected RIA measurements because serum T3 and T4 hormone concentrations appeared elevated in those birds with moderate to high antibody levels. There was major variance in the electrophoretic heterogeneity of the THA from individual chickens; i.e., some of the sera contained antibodies to T3 or T4 that appeared to be monoclonal, whereas other sera exhibited polyclonal multi-banded patterns. To determine if antibodies reactive with T3 and T4 (which are haptens) were generated by antibody responses to the T3/T4 sites on the thyroglobulin molecule, competitive binding assays were performed to determine the relative binding affinities of the antibodies for the haptens (T3/T4) and the "hapten-conjugate" (thyroglobulin). In these assays, thyroglobulin competed with the haptens, thus supporting the above hypothesis.