The Zonal Action of Antiserum in Pneumococcus Infections

[摘要] 1. 1. The prozone phenomenon in serum treatment of experimental pneumococcus septicemia is described.2. 2. The fact that excessive amounts of protective antibody in many instances fail to prevent death, is discussed. It is suggested that the presence of an interfering factor is responsible for the prozone. The mechanism of the action of this factor is treated mathematically for characteristic cases and the resulting formulae are applied to actual observations.3. 3. This factor may interfere with the reaction between antibody and bacteria either by reacting with the antibody or by reacting with the antigen. 1. a. The action of the antibody may be impaired to a certain extent by precipitation with the injurious factor which, under this assumption, is identical with the soluble specific substance as suggested by Felton and Bailey and by other authors. For instance if there are 100 units of antibody and 10 equivalent units of the interfering substance, then the potency of the antiserum will be reduced to that extent; the relative amount of this reduction will be constant however, in this example a reduction of 10 per cent; but this does not explain the complete inactivation of large doses of antibody as occurs in the prozone phenomenon. 2. b. The interfering substance may react with the bacteria. In that case it does not decrease the neutralizing power of the antibody proper. Although it might be present only in minute quantities it reacts with the bacteria making some of them less susceptible or entirely resistant to the action of the antibodies. Thus both the limitation of protection to a certain maximal number of bacteria and the prozone can be explained on the same basis.4. 4. The properties ascribed to the interfering factor sub 3 ( b ) and its irregular occurrence in antisera and concentrated antibody solutions suggest that it is a modified antibody.

[学科分类] 生物科学（综合）