The anaphylactogenic character of horse dander and its crossed relationship to horse serum. ∗

Abstract

The anaphylactogenic properties of horse dander have been open to question. Friedberger 1 contends that horse dander is not anaphylactogenic. Busson and Ogata 2 and, later, Longcope, O'Brien and Perlzweig, 3 have shown that horse dander is definitely anaphylactogenic. These latter studies have appeared in the literature during the progress of our work on this same subject. We should like to state that our findings definitely show horse dander to be anaphylactogenic.

During the course of our studies, we have had occasion to work on the crossed relationship between horse dander and horse serum. Longcope 2 and his co-workers definitely state that this crossed relationship does not exist and that horse dander is anaphylactogenically specific. Contrary to these findings, we have found that there is a definite crossed anaphylactic relationship between these two substances.

The difference in our results may be accounted for by the facts (1) that our method of protein extraction was somewhat different; (2)that we used horse dander as the sensitizing agent, and, (3) that we did not rely on the Dale method as a final criterion for anaphylaxis.