Studies in Synergy

Abstract

The following experiments were stimulated by our interest in the subject of "allergic irritability" (1) and in the work of Burky (2) who observed that weakly antigenic substances, for example, beef lens and ragweed pollen, provoked in rabbits marked antibody formation and hypersensitiveness when combined with staphylotoxin produced by growing staphylococci in broth containing the weak antigen. He hypothesized that this was due to the conjugation, in vitro, of the poor antigen with the powerful antigenic toxin. Of particular interest was the marked sensitivity of rabbits to simple mechanical trauma after several injections of rabbit muscle toxin. Because we had observed comparable phenomena in rabbits treated in other ways we felt t h a t the hyperreactivity might be due to factors arising in the animal's body rather than to those occurring simply in vitro. The present communication deals with tests of this hypothesis. E X P E R I M E N T A LThe experiments, in general, were arranged to permit comparison of groups of animals injected in different ways with the two antigenic substances.The rabbits were adults, of either an English-lilac-Havana hybrid stock, or pure Havanas, strains usually quite resistant to spontaneous infection. In any given experiment a single variety was employed, and usually animals were of the same sex. Only those with large areas of good skin were selected; the hair was removed with a fine mechanical clipper; and care was taken not to inject sites

The Antigenic and Synergistic Action of a Toxic Serum Extract of Hemolytic Streptococci

“…The induction of bacterial hypersensitivity affected a much more pronounced increase in reactivity to rabbit serum. Probably similar nonspecific alterations in imimunological reactivity incident to the development of bacterial hyperseinsitivity have also been observed with respect to horse serum (Schultz (7)) and eye lens extract (Swift and Schultz (8,2)). …”

Development of Vaccine Adjuvants: A Historical Perspective

“…One such approach was the use of toxin-antitoxin mixtures [19]. Another approach involved work with tuberculosis (TB) vaccines which demonstrated that the infl ammation induced by TB could enhance immune responses to other antigens.…”