Tuberculin Hypersensitiveness Without Infection in Guinea Pigs

Abstract

Abstract Until a very short time ago it was generally accepted that typical tuberculin hypersensitiveness in guinea pigs, as elicited by skin reactions, could not be produced without the presence of living tubercle bacilli in the body of the animal. This had been the conclusion of practically all workers who had seriously studied the subject, and, indeed, was the experience of one of the writers in a study of tuberculin hypersusceptibilities and anaphylaxis published in 1921 (1). It seemed at that time as though one of the most important factors in the elucidation of the biological changes which take place in the infected animal would be a more precise knowledge of the conditions which determined tuberculin hypersensitiveness. The task we set ourselves, therefore, was an attempt to simulate, with dead tubercle bacilli or their products, conditions analogous to those produced in the guinea pig in the course of infection with living bacilli. Beginnings in this direction were reported in the paper mentioned above, in which we succeededin obtaining definite, though transitory, skin hypersusceptibility in four animals energetically treated with considerable ~ mounts of the nucleoprotein extracted from ground tubercle bacilli. These experiments were subsequently elaborated by Petroff in our laboratory, in a study submitted in partial fulfillment of his doctor’s degree (2). His experiments indicated that appropriate" treatment with tubercle bacilli killed by heat would produce skin sensitiveness to tuberculin indistinguishable, in all essential respects, from that observed in tuberculous guinea pigs. Since that time, work on this subject has been continued both at our own laboratory and in that of Petroff at Saranac Lake, in collaborative studies which are still going on.