Local Hypersensitiveness in Tuberculous Guinea Pigs.

Abstract

The plan of the experiments described in this note was suggested to us by the papers of Lewis and Loomis 1 on allergic irritability.

Guinea pigs shortly after a tuberculous infection, during the interval when the tuberculin sensitiveness usually appears, were treated with egg white, and later the skin sensitiveness toward egg white and the appearance of precipitins and complement fixating antibodies in the blood serum were examined. Non-tuberculous guinea pigs were treated and observed in the same way.

Table I contains the observations with one series of animals. The other series, together with the detailed description of the observations, will be published later.

Six control guinea pigs were treated together with the series described in the table; three were treated like the guinea pigs 1-3 of the table, three with larger doses. Only one of these guinea pigs, treated with the larger amounts of egg white, has shown a small reaction, fading in 24 hours, in the eighth day after treatment. The same guinea pig gave a faint precipitation with the dilution of egg white from 1:10 to 1:5000. After more prolonged treatment, we found in correspondence with former observations, a quite extensive wheal, which disappeared in 36 hours, after intracutaneous injection of egg white. At the same time, we found precipitation with higher dilutions of the egg white (in one serum 1 :10,000, in another 1 :100,000), but with all dilutions the precipitation appeared only later, and remained faint compared with the precipitation given by the serum of the tuberculous guinea pigs. Even after prolonged treatment we found no complement fixation with the serum.