Note on the intraperitoneal lysis of tubercle bacilli

Abstract

In a previous communication, 1 it was shown that tuberculous guinea-pigs, rabbits and dogs react to intraperitoneal reinoculation with tubercle bacilli by causing rapid degenerative changes in the injected bacteria and a rapid decrease in their number, not observed in normal animals. The question now arose as to the mechanism of this heightened peritoneal resistance. From the similarity between this phenomenon and the Pfeiffer reaction attempts were made to determine whether or not the specific antibodies, upon which the intraperitoneal lysis may be supposed to depend, are present in the circulating fluids.

To test this, guinea-pigs, rabbits and dogs were made tuberculous by inoculating them subcutaneously with tubercle bacilli. After an interval of from five to eight weeks, these animals were bled and their blood tested in vitro and in vivo. In a number of these experiments direct transfusion of the blood was made from the tuberculous animals into normal animals, an amount of blood often as great as three quarters of the total blood-volume being thus passed into the circulating system of the normal animals, the normal animals having been previously bled to free them as much as possible from normal blood. The transfused animals were subsequently tested by intraperitoneal injections of tubercle bacilli.

Neither in the test-tube experiments, nor in normal animals injected subcutaneously, intravenously or intraperitoneally with tuberculous serum, nor even in the normal animals directly transfused with large quantities of the unaltered blood of tuberculous animals, has the reaction thus far been obtained. The substances responsible for the heightened peritoneal resistance, therefore, apparently do not exist in appreciable quantities as circulating antibodies, at least at the stage of the disease studied. The heightened tuberculous resistance, therefore, is apparently due to substances held in fixed tissue cells.