The demonstration of two types of suppressor mechanism in leprosy patients and their contacts by quadruple skin-testing with mycobacterial reagent mixtures

Abstract

A previous study in Nepal involving skin-testing simultaneously with four different mycobacterial reagents (three of them mixtures) re vealed that the addition, in the same skin-test site, of pooled reagents from fast-g rowing mycobacteria locally suppressed the response to pooled slow growers. This finding has been confirmed in Bombay . It has also been shown that the addition of reagents prepared from certain fast-growing species to that prepared from slow-growers in one skin-test site will suppress the re sponse to the same slow-grower reagent injected alone in the other arm. This type of suppression probably requires recognition of species-specific antigens of the fast-growing species concerned. The importance of the observations in relation to leprosy and possible mechanisms underlying them are discussed.