Abstract
The mechanism of atopic hypersensitiveness has been demonstrated in the blood by Ramirez, deBesche, and Prausnitz and Küstner, by the method of passive transfer.
This reacting substance in the blood of atopic individuals (reagin) readily attaches itself to the cells of the normal recipient, remaining active for at least sixteen days. The skin of some normal individuals is non-receptive, that is, it cannot be passively sensitized with atopic serum. This difference in normal skins bears no relation to the difference among human individuals in their susceptibility to poison ivy.
The atopic reagin is not destroyed by exposure to a temperature of 56° C. for one-half hour.
Local passive sensitization is effected in normal human beings without incubation period. The mixture of the serum of an atopic individual and its related atopen produces an immediate reaction when injected intradermally into the normal human skin, and is toxic for some normal guinea pigs upon intravenous injection.
The symptoms produced by such injection into guinea pigs are not those of anaphylaxis.
The atopic reagin can be completely neutralized with the related atopen. There seems to be no factor in the successive partial neutralization of the atopic reagin, as there is in the successive partial neutralization of precipitin.
The atopen of Ambrosia Trifida has been found to be identical with that of Ambrosia Artimisiæfolia.
Sensitiveness to poison ivy could not be transferred even with serum of an exquisitely sensitive individual.
Sensitiveness to tuberculin could not be transferred to the skin of non-sensitive human individuals with the serum of a tuberculin sensitive individual.
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