A fluorescent antibody technique was developed for the determination of the capsular‐type of strains of Staphylococcus aureus. It compared favourably with the method using serum‐soft agar (Yoshida 1972). With the new technique, many populations of encapsulated and unencapsulated strains were investigated. Of 1421 fresh isolates of Staph. aureus, 54 were encapsulated and among these 54·8% and 48·1% were mono‐ and polyvalent, respectively. Capsular‐type antigens A and B were found in 92·5% and 44·4% of strains respectively; capsular‐types C and D were found relatively infrequently. In the other group, of unencapsulated strains, capsular‐type antigen production was demonstrated in 125 out of 163 strains examined. Mono‐ and polyvalent capsular‐types (A and B antigen producing strains) comprised 77·6% and 22·4%. respectively. In these capsular‐types A and B were found in 54·4% and 62·4%, respectively: capsular‐type antigen C and D producing strains were again infrequent. These results indicate that a majority of ordinary Staph. aureus strains produce capsular‐type antigens although isolation of the encapsulated strains is infrequent.

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There exist many immunotherapeutic means for allergic diseases, where specific or heterogenic antigens are applied (1, 3). Many of those are thought to be related to the desensitization phenomenon described by earlier investigators since R. Otto in 1905 (6). Isaacs (4) suggested in his review that certain interference phenomenon between anaphylactic reactions of two different antigen-antibody system can occur, and he presented that when allergic reactions of two systems are produced simultaneously in a body one of them will become so-called desensitization condition. It appears that this hyposensitization may be due to certain alteration of enzyme systems in association with complement and others (2) or unknown events essential for allergic reaction. Taking this interference phenomenon in consideration, present authors carried out experiments using guinea pigs in order to know a possible inhibitory effect of either moderate local or latent systemic anaphylactic reaction caused by injecting an aqueous fraction of Corynebacterium equi against passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) of bovine serum albumin (BSA)-system.A fraction of C. equi was prepared as follows; C. equi Ko-85 strain was kindly provided from the Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo. Fifty grams of the bacterial cells were ground in a vibrogen cell miller for 5 hr and suspended in 1,000 ml of N/100 NaOH at 4 C for 48 hr. The suspension was centrifuged at 13,000 rpm for 10 min to remove cell debris. The supernatant was added with 1 N HCl to make precipitates maximally at an iso-electric point of pH 4.0, followed by standing at 4 C for 24 hr. Then, the precipitates were collected by centrifugation and dissolved in 100 ml of distilled water by an addition of 1 N NaOH adjusting to pH 7.2. This precipitation-dissolution procedure was further repeated three times and finally a slight opalescent solution was obtained. After removing insoluble materials in the solution by centrifugation, it was dialyzed against distilled water for more than 48 hr and lyophilized, so harvesting dried mass of 1,230 mg, and it was named tentatively as CP fraction.Sensitization of guinea pigs with CP fraction was performed by intraperitoneal injections of a dose of 1 mg CP fraction a day for seven days. On 7-th day after the last injection, the animals were used as sensitized individuals. The PCA reaction was carried out according to the original method of Ovary and Bier (5) using anti-509

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