The toxicity of foreign leucocytes

Abstract

The injection of from 0.7 c.c. to 1.0 c.c. of rabbit leucocytes into the cerebral meninges of dogs is apparently invariably fatal. The animals show no immediate symptoms; but about two hours later there is beginning incoördination, rigidity and respiratory distress, increasing to collapse about the fourth hour, and death about the sixth. An occasional dog survives till the twenty-fourth hour. Autopsy usually shows extensive local hemorrhagic, inflammatory and necrotic changes.

Horse leucocytes similarly injected produce symptoms of the same general nature, though less severe. About two thirds of the dogs injected with horse leucocytes recover. A reinjection of these dogs, however, or the injection of dogs whose meninges have been previously injured by tubercle bacilli, is almost invariably fatal.

The injection of 0.5 c.c. of rabbit leucocytes into the spinal meninges of monkeys produces slight symptoms from which most of the monkeys recover. Larger amounts are usually fatal.

Horse leucocytes are less toxic for monkeys, producing few if any symptoms, even when injected in 1.0 C.C. doses. The toxicity of both leucocytes however increases on repeated injection, the third injection often being fatal. Autopsy in such cases often shows edema of the lungs as the apparent immediate cause of death.

These tests have a bearing on the possible therapeutic uses of leucocytes in meningeal infections.