Transmission of protein hypersensitiveness from mother to offspring. I, Critique of placental permeability / by Bret Ratner, Holmes C. Jackson, and Helen Lee Gruehl from the Department of Physiology, University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York University, New York City.

Bret Ratner

Date:: [1927?]

Credit: Transmission of protein hypersensitiveness from mother to offspring. I, Critique of placental permeability / by Bret Ratner, Holmes C. Jackson, and Helen Lee Gruehl from the Department of Physiology, University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York University, New York City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$Reprinted from The Journal op Immunology Yol. XIV, No. 5, November, 1927 TRANSMISSION OF PROTEIN HYPERSENSITIVENESS FROM MOTHER TO OFFSPRING1 I. CRITIQUE OF PLACENTAL PERMEABILITY BRET RATNER, HOLMES C. JACKSON, and HELEN LEE GRUEHL From the Department of Physiology, University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York University, New York City Received for publication September 13, 1927 Rosenau and Anderson (1) were the first to record instances of the transmission of hypersensitiveness or anaphylaxis; this hy¬ persusceptibility was transmitted to young guinea pigs whose mothers had been given diphtheria toxin-antitoxin mixture or normal horse serum two or three months before parturition. The diphtheria toxin immunity transferred from mother to offspring, demonstrated by Wernicke (2) in 1895, Smith (3) in 1905, Anderson (4) in 1906 and the transmission of hypersuscepti- bility first shown by Rosenau and Anderson (1) in 1906, led Anderson (5) to question whether female guinea pigs that received toxin-antitoxin, either before or during pregnancy, could give birth to offspring that were both immune to diphtheria toxin and hyper susceptible to horse serum. He readily found that a mother can simultaneously transmit to her young these two properties—the immunity to diphtheria toxin and the hyper¬ susceptibility to horse serum. Gay and Southard (6) presented evidence that mother guinea pigs, that were thought to be refractory to horse serum, but were later shown by others to be more highly sensitized, still contain the sensitizing substance of the serum unneutralized. The off¬ spring of the so-called refractory animals, born at a period when 1 This work is being carried on under “The Crane Fund for the Study of Anaphylaxis.” 249 THE JOURNAL OP IMMUNOLOGY VOL. XIV NO. 5$