The effect of serum-sensitiveness and precipitin formation upon the efficacy of diphtheria toxoid and toxin-antitoxin mixtures in promoting antitoxin production / A.T. Glenny, Barbara E. Hopkins and Hilda Waddington.

  • Glenny, A. T.
Date:
[1925?]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The effect of serum-sensitiveness and precipitin formation upon the efficacy of diphtheria toxoid and toxin-antitoxin mixtures in promoting antitoxin production / A.T. Glenny, Barbara E. Hopkins and Hilda Waddington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HE Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, Vol. XXVIII., 1925 OCT. 1926 ~ P. f^Sip M 4? ECT OF SERUM-SENSITIVENESS AND * —Vcipitin FORMATION UPON THE EFFI¬ CACY OF DIPHTHERIA TOXOID AND TOXIN- ANTITOXIN MIXTURES IN PROMOTING ANTITOXIN PRODUCTION. A. T. Glenny, Barbara E. Hopkins and Hilda Waddington. Wellcome Physiological Keseavch Laboratovies, Bedtenham, Kent. Earlier woik on the subject of passive immunity has shown that antitoxin given to a sensitive animal is rapidly lost from the circulating blood. The rate of disappearance has been traced in rabbits previously sensitised by small doses of serum such as are present in 1-0 c.c. of toxin-antitoxin mixtures used for human immunisation (Glenny and Hopkins, 1922). It became evident that this rate of loss might have an important bearing upon the effect of an injection, in a sensitised animal, of a toxin-antitoxin mixture, causing possibly the rapid elimination of either the antitoxin alone or the mixture as a whole. It iwas also considered that, apart from the question of direct loss of material injected, the cellular activity and the precipitin formation which follow the injection of serum into a sensitive animal might aihibit or interfere with the immunising power both of toxoid and toxin-antitoxin mixtures as primary and secondary stimuli. In this aaper, we shall deal with experimental work directed to investigate ;hese two aspects of the subject. The possibility of a rapid elimination of the antitoxin from a toxin- mtitoxin mixture when injected into a serum sensitive animal was investigated on guinea-pigs. These animals were given toxin-antitoxin mixtures in doses sufficiently large that if the antitoxin alone were ost, there would remain in the circulation several lethal doses of toxin; guinea-pigs not previously sensitised were used as controls. The erum-sensitive animals did not succumb to the injection, and produced 10 larger swellings than did the control pigs. It was therefore con¬ ned that if any elimination had taken place, both the toxin and ntitoxin had been eliminated from the circulation. Table I. and charts 1 and 2 show the results of an experiment upon he influence of precipitin formation upon the antigenic effect of a oxin-antitoxin mixture (T.A.M.) given as a secondary stimulus. Previous experiments had shown that in a normal rabbit precipitin produc- ’ ion begins about the seventh day and is thus less rapid than in a sensitive ‘ mmal in which rapid production begins four days after the injection of serum, * 3 that the injection of a toxin-antitoxin mixture, preceded four days by serum, °uld probably be unable to produce any immunity response if rapid elimination