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Biological Laboratory, Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, Rhode Island
Abstract
It is generally conceded that immediate, accelerated and delayed anaphylactic reactions are fundamentally identical processes differing only in the speed and severity of response. The delayed serum reactions, which so frequently follow an initial injection of horse serum have never been satisfactorily explained. Individual predisposition is not commonly accepted since Park (1), Lamson (2) and many others have demonstrated that skin sensitivity tests are not always reliable guides in serum sickness. According to Von Pirquet and Schick (3) the formation of antibodies after an injection of horse serum precedes the complete disappearance of antigen from the blood and a reaction between these antibodies and residual antigen could account for the delayed response. Wells (4), Longcope and Rackeman (5) and others are inclined to favor this explanation. Weil (6), Opie (7) and Oguchi and Hamano (8), however, have shown that when antigen and antibody coexist in the same serum the residual antigen is not specific for the new formed antibodies.
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