Hemagglutinating Substances for Human Cells in Various Egyptian Plants

Abstract

Hemagglutinating substances have long been known to occur in the seeds of certain plants. Renkonen (1) and Boyd and Reguera (2) discovered that extracts of certain plants gave agglutination which was nearly or quite specific for human erythrocytes of certain blood groups. In particular a number of plants yielded extracts which were specific and highly active for blood group A. The possibility of plant sources for blood grouping reagents is not only of theoretical significance, but also of possible practical importance, since such sources are abundant, and highly active preparations could be simply manufactured at low cost. If plant agglutinins are to compete with human isoagglutinins, however, for use in routine blood grouping, it seems necessary to find also a plant source of a specific anti-B agglutinin. It therefore seemed worthwhile to make a survey of agglutinins found in Egyptian and other Near Eastern plants. The present communication is a report of the results of such tests.