An experimental study of anti-anaphylaxis

Abstract

If a guinea-pig be given a single injection of a foreign proteid, it becomes, after the lapse of 10 to 14 days, actively sensitized to that proteid, in such wise that the reinjection of the same, in doses far too small to cause any symptoms in a normal animal, produces almost immediate death with convulsions. If, however, such a sensitized pig, after the sensitizing injection, be given a second dose, too small to induce its death, it immediately passes into a condition of anti-anaphylaxis, in which it is refractory to the foreign proteid in question, and may manifest no symptoms even after the injection of doses toxic to normal animals. This refractory stage lasts for weeks or months. In the same way, an animal may be passively sensitized by the introduction into its veins or peritoneum of the serum of another animal, which has been previously immunized or sensitized to a foreign proteid; in this case, too, the injection of a relatively small, i. e., sublethal, dose of the same proteid into the passively sensitized animal produces a condition of anti-anaphylaxis.

By no experimental device hitherto employed has it been possible to alter this condition of anti-anaphylaxis. The theories offered to explain it are numerous. Friedemann, in his general review of anaphylaxis, in 1911, cites three hypotheses, those of Gay and Southard, of Besredka, and of Friedberger, all of which he proves to be untenable, and offers three other possible explanations. He concludes that anti-anaphylaxis presents a “most interesting, novel, and as yet unexplained phenomenon.”

The following experiments appear to us to throw much light on the problem. Guinea-pigs have been actively sensitized, by injection, to a foreign proteid; after the lapse of about two weeks, they have been rendered anti-anaphylactic by the intra-peritoneal injection of a sublethal dose of this proteid.