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The Preparation of Antigens from Cultures of Treponema Pallidum

From the Division of Laboratories and Research, New York State Department of Health, Branch Laboratory, New York City

Abstract

The conclusions of this work are based upon the study of one strain of the Treponema pallidum.

1. The results with aqueous and alcoholic extracts of Treponema pallidum agree essentially with the original observations of Noguchi. By the aqueous extraction of the organisms antigenic substances were obtained which react in a marked degree with sera from rabbits immunized with the same cultural strains, but not with syphilitic rabbit or syphilitic human sera. Under the conditions of our experiments either the antigenic substances which react with rabbit immune sera, syphilitic rabbit, and syphilitic human sera were not readily extractable in ethyl alcohol or were present in very low concentration.

2. The addition of cholesterol to the aqueous, strong salt and alcoholic extracts of Treponema pallidum did not increase their sensitivity but in the case of the alcoholic extracts especially, it rendered them extremely anticomplementary.

3. The results obtained with dialyzed aqueous extracts of Treponema pallidum which had been previously extracted with alcohol indicate that the antigenic substances obtained by aqueous extraction of the organism differ from those obtained by extraction with alcohol.

4. Antigenic substances which reacted with rabbit immune sera, with syphilitic rabbit, and markedly with syphilitic human sera, were obtained by the extractions of uninoculated medium with alcohol. Slightly increased antigenic activity was noted with similar extracts of the whole culture medium containing Treponema pallidum. These observations suggest that the divergent results which are reported in the literature concerning the solubility in alcohol of antigenic substances of this organism may be due to differences in the media used and the culture materials which were extracted.

5. Treponema pallidum produced in culture substances which fixed complement in the presence of very small amounts of the sera of rabbits immunized with the homologous strain and the activity of these substances corresponded to that obtained by aqueous extracts of the treponemata free from medium.