Abstract
The treatment of influenzal meningitis in children with sera from horses immunized with H. influenza has, in general, been unsuccessful.
The investigations of Goodner and Horsfall 1 , 2 , 3 demonstrated the superiority of rabbit over horse antipneumococcal serum. The causes of this superiority were believed to be, first, the smaller size of the anticarbohydrate molecule of rabbit serum, endowing it with greater powers of penetration of the tissues, and secondly, the absence of the prozonal phenomenon 4 or inhibitory mechanism in rabbit serum, when amounts greater than a critical quantity were used.
Rabbit anti-influenzal serum, because of its greater penetrating powers, and some evidence that it crossed the blood-brain barrier, seemed to offer theoretical advantages over horse serum, assuming that the important antibody of the anti-influenzal serum is the anticarbohydrate as in rabbit antipneumococcal serum.
Pittman 5 has brought forth much evidence that there is a parallelism between the antigenic structure of pneumococci and H. influenza. She demonstrated a capsule on all smooth strains by Muir's capsule-stain and showed that such strains had the power to form soluble type-specific substances. All strains were found to be bile-soluble and therefore apparently produced enzymes as does the pneumococcus.
Because of this similarity, the knowledge derived from the study of pneumococci has been applied in the selection of a suitable antigen for the production of rabbit antibodies for H. influenza. The strains used were those isolated from cases of influenzal meningitis. All the meningeal strains from children thus far reported have been Type B. Typing was performed by the capsular-swelling method with antisera obtained from Pittman. A large loopful (3-4 mm) of Type B antiserum is placed upon a coverslip. To it is added a 1 mm loopful of dilute young culture or biological fluid containing the suspected H. influenza organisms.
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