Effects on meningeal tuberculosis of the local injection of foreign leucocytes

Abstract

In a previous report, 1 it was shown that the use of foreign leucocytes as a local therapeutic agent in experimental meningeal infections in dogs is limited by the toxicity of foreign leucocytes for these animals. Rabbit leucocytes injected into the meningeal cavities of dogs invariably cause death. A single injection of horse leucocytes, however, can be safely made in normal dogs, although on repeating the injection, or on injecting horse leucocytes for the first time into meninges already the seat of an inflammatory lesion, death results.

The injection of horse leucocytes into the cerebral meninges of dogs, simultaneously with the inoculation of the meninges with tubercle bacilli, causes a slight delay in the development of the paralytic symptoms in about half of the treated animals. This delay, however, is very slight when compared with the great prolongation of the latent period previously observed, 2 after treatment with homologous leucocytes.

Tn the same report, it was shown that foreign leucocytes are much less toxic for monkeys. Both rabbit leucocytes and horse leucocytes can be safely injected into the meningeal cavities of these animals.

The study of the therapeutic control of meningeal tuberculosis in monkeys is made difficult by extra-dural leakage, when the inoculations and treatments are made by the method of lumbar puncture. The inoculations and treatments, in the later experiments herein reported, were therefore made through a permanent wax-trephine 3 opening in the skull.

The injection of foreign leucocytes into the meningeal cavities of monkeys, either simultaneously with the inoculation with tubercle bacilli, or subsequent to the inoculation has thus far given no definitely positive prophylactic or curative effects. In a small group of monkeys, however, inoculated and treated by the method of lumbar puncture, the repeated injection of rabbit leucocytes was associated with a considerable prolongation of the latent period in one of the treated monkeys, and by a complete prevention of the subsequent tuberculosis in a second monkey.