Elective Localization and Cataphoretic Potential of Streptococci

Abstract

Measurements of cataphoretic potential have been made with the Northrop-Kunitz-Mudd apparatus. All suspensions were washed and measured in tested distilled water at 124 volts, 23° C. Determinations of pH of the suspensions were made colorimetrically. The streptococci were grown in tall columns (12 cm.) of glucose-brain broth, in tubes (1.5×20 cm.), for 18 hours at 35° C. Significant, and perhaps characteristic, potentials of green-producing streptococci have been obtained in a considerable number of different diseases, but in this preliminary paper we wish to report only on those obtained in studies of chronic encephalitis and chronic infectious arthritis, together with controls.

Material was obtained from a series of 18 cases of encephalitis and allied conditions. Streptococci obtained from the nasopharynx and from other foci of infection were subjected to tests of potential directly in suspensions and in cultures in glucose-brain broth. Single colonies of green-producing streptococci, obtained originally from the nasopharynx, from other foci of infection, from the stools, and even from the blood, were cultured in glucose-brain broth and subjected to tests of potential in this state. The potential, in these studies, in nearly all of a large number of tests, was circa 8.0 (μ/sec). Similar tests of streptococci from a series of 26 cases of chronic infectious arthritis yielded a potential of circa 10.6 (μ/sec) in a high percentage of a large number of experiments.

We have used the methods of intracerebral injection and direct injection into the right knee joint, of intravenous injection in rabbits and intraperitoneal injection in mice, in attempts to correlate elective localizing power of the respective streptococci with their cataphoretic potentials.

The streptococci isolated from the brains of animals in which encephalitis developed following injection of material from cases of encephalitis, or from other sources containing “neurotropic” streptococci, had a potential, chiefly, of circa 8.0 (μ/sec).