Therapeutic experiments with Rosenow's antipoliomyelitic serum

Abstract

Opinions of bacteriologists on the etiology of poliomyelitis divide them into two well-defined camps. One group affirms that the streptococci bear a causal relationship to poliomyelitis and are biologically akin to the globoid bodies of Flexner and Noguchi; the other group denies that they are of essential etiologic importance and regards them as secondary invaders. The question is important because of its relation to the problems of prevention and treatment of the disease.

Because of the failure to produce in large animals a serum possessing therapeutic properties for the treatment of poliomyelitis, serum derived from recovered cases has been used. A far greater measure of success has recently been claimed in treatment of human cases by the use of serum produced in animals such as the horse by the repeated intravenous injections of streptococci. Obviously the treatment of a long series of cases from several epidemics is necessary before any definite conclusion can be reached concerning the efficiency of a specific serum. In the present case, however, we believe that the question may be more expeditiously answered by the experimental method.

An injection of minute amounts of active poliomyelitic virus intracerebrally into the monkey invariably results in paralysis and generally in death of the animal, but intravenous injections of much larger amounts of the same virus produce no symptoms. If, however, at the time of the intravenous injection or a few hours before, the meninges and choroid plexus are inflamed by the introduction of small amounts of sterile monkey, horse or human serum, or even sterile isotonic solutions of electrolytes, the virus passes from the blood into the nervous tissues and induces characteristic changes which lead to paralysis and death. Flexner and Amoss have shown that repeated injections of immune serum invariably offset the effects of aseptic inflammation, probably by neutralizing the virus as it passes through.