The preparation and some properties of purified diphtheria toxoid / by Arthur Frederick Watson and Elsie Langstaff.

  • Watson, A. F.
Date:
[1926?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The preparation and some properties of purified diphtheria toxoid / by Arthur Frederick Watson and Elsie Langstaff. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/20
    [From THE BIOCHEMICAL JOURNAL, Vol. XX, No. 4, 1926] [All Rights reserved] XCIX. THE PREPARATION AND SOME PROPERTIES OF PURIFIED DIPHTHERIA TOXOID. By ARTHUR FREDERICK WATSON and ELSIE LANGSTAFF. From the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories, Beckenham, Kent. (Received June 30th, 1926.) The desirability of purifying toxins and antigens in general need not be emphasised. One of the chief difficulties experienced in the employment of the Schick test for susceptibility to diphtheria is the presence in the toxic filtrates of some substance which produces the upseudo55 reaction and hinders the correct interpretation of the specific effect due to the toxin. A similar reacting substance appears to exist in the filtrates of the streptococcus which have recently been used in the Dick test for susceptibility to scarlet fever [Dick and Dick, 1924]. In both cases the substance causing the “pseudo” reaction is definitely more heat-stable than the specific substance, but beyond this fact nothing is known of its constitution or properties. Further, many culture filtrates to a greater or less degree contain substances which tend to interfere with the general condition of the animal being immunised [Watson and Langstaff, 1926]. These substances may cause temperatures and other non-specific reactions which preclude the injection without injury of the increasingly large doses of toxin necessary for the successful production of antitoxin. The presence of similar non-specific substances has recently been suspected in the culture filtrates of B. Welchii and B. coli by D ailing and Mason [1926]. The production of immunity to lamb dysentery was, interfered with and in some cases lameness and even death caused by some component of the culture filtrates which formed the basis of their prophylactic mixtures. Similar difficulties exist in the clinical aspects of the problem. The active immunisation of children and adults against diphtheria and scarlet fever is attended in a small percentage of instances by painful reactions which seem to be due to some non-specific constituents of the toxin-antitoxin mixtures at present in use and not to the active principle itself. The clinical use of culture filtrates treated with formaldehyde has been explored by Park and his colleagues [1924] in America. They found that such toxoid preparations were valuable antigens [see also Glenny and Hopkins, 1923] but concluded that the toxoid preparations which had no toxicity in guinea-pigs could not be properly used in human beings in doses larger than 0*5 cc. because of the marked “ pseudo55 reaction. With some of the later toxoid preparations, these workers find that the difficulties connected with the local reactions have been Bioch. xx 50