Abstract
A large number of children over 3 years of age have been given skin tests with varying amounts of a standard scarlatina streptococcus filtrate toxin. In a group giving a positive Dick test with 1 or 2 S. T. D., no antitoxin was demonstrable in the blood. In a few children who were negative to 2 S. T. D., but positive to 5 S. T. D., the antitoxin determinations were somewhat irregular, although when 10 or 20 S. T. D. of toxin or more was necessary to obtain a skin reaction, antitoxin was readily demonstrable, and in those children who gave negative skin tests to 100 or 400 S. T. D., antitoxin was present in the blood in rather large amount.
In tests on younger children a similar association of antitoxin with negative skin tests was found. A certain number of infants, more commonly in the first year, but occasionally later, who gave negative skin reactions to 20 or 50 S. T. D. of toxin, had no antitoxin demonstrable in the blood.
The association of the presence of antitoxin in the blood with negative skin tests to small amounts of toxin, which seems fairly constant in older children, is somewhat more variable in infancy, and certain older infants may have negative skin tests, even to considerable amounts of toxin, without demonstrable antitoxin in the blood.
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