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?]
Catalogue details

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.

    5/12 (page 309)
    Again we find that the injection of homologous serum, four days before the injection of a secondary stimulus (toxin-antitoxin), into a serum sensitive rabbit which is immune to diphtheria toxin greatly reduced the effect that would otherwise have been produced by such a secondary stimulus. These experiments all relate to a secondary stimulus in animals already immune, and seem to give very definite results. It was now decided to try the effect of sensitising a non-immune animal before giving the primary stimulus, i.e. the first injection of diphtheria toxin and antitoxin mixture. Antitoxic value in units per c.c. —0.07 ■0.06 [ CHART 3 ■0.05 — C. 04 — 0.03 0.02 — 0.01 -0.000 Table II. and chart 3 show the results of an experiment on three non-immune rabbits, G. 53, G. 41 and G. 81. A normal rabbit (G. 53) received as a primary stimulus 25 c.c. of the toxin-antitoxin mixture B. 543. At the end of one and a half weeks its blood contained a titratable amount of antitoxin, and at the end of five and a half weeks the antitoxic value had risen to 0'033 unit per c.c. This was a reasonable response and showed that the mixture was a good antigen. A serum-sensitive rabbit (G. 41) received the same amount of the same mixture four days after an injection of 1 c.c. of normal horse serum and the mixture produced no detectable antitoxin. This dose of toxin-antitoxin repeated six months later did not act as a secondary stimulus, showing that the rabbit had not been actively immunised by the previous injection. A normal rabbit (G. 81) also had normal horse serum four days before an injection of toxin-antitoxin but in this case the immunity production was in no way impaired.