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Some Blood Histamine Values of Parturient Cows and Young Calves

Dairy Cattle Research Branch, USDA, Beltsville, Maryland

ABSTRACT

Histamine has been implicated as being primarily responsible for a variety of anaphylactic and allergic reactions. Until recently, the usual technique of estimating histamine in tissues and body fluids involved laborious bioassays utilizing the contractions of the smooth musculature of the isolated guinea pig ileum (5). The fluorimetric method of Shore, Burkhalter, and Cohn (6), greatly simplifies its determination.

We have recently investigated the concentration of histamine in the blood of cows and calves as part of a study of antibodies in the milk of experimentally immunized cows. The antigen, a suspension of heat-killed Escherichia coli, was infused into the udder of Holstein cows at weekly intervals for a month before calving. Antibodies against these antigens occur in the milk produced by such cows, and since histamine is released in antigen-antibody reactions, it was measured routinely in the blood of the animals used. A group of untreated parturient Holstein cows also was studied.