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Tissue Culture Studies of Cellular Hypersensitivity in Rheumatic Fever

I. The Response of Human White Blood Cells to Streptococci and to Crude Filtrates of Streptococcal Cultures¹

From the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, University of Colorado School of Medicine, and the Department of Health and Hospitals, Denver, Colorado

Abstract

White blood cells from normal individuals and patients with active rheumatic fever have been compared in tissue culture in their responses to crude streptococcal filtrates and to disintegrated streptococci derived from strains presumed to have caused rheumatic fever—both in the presence of pooled serum from normal individuals as well as in serum from rheumatic fever cases. The cells from the two groups were allowed to phagocytize the same strains of heat-killed streptococci. Migration was observed after 1 day and spindle-shaped transformation of certain white blood cells was measured from 6 to 10 days after explantation of these cells.

There was no "all or none" phenomenon that would enable one to distinguish an individual with rheumatic fever from a normal person. In general, there was some depression of migration and spindle-shaped cell transformation in the various experimental systems that included rheumatic fever cells exposed to the test materials. The responses of the normal cells in rheumatic fever serum with the same test materials were influenced in a like manner. There were no consistent significant statistical differences in the comparisons of the normal and rheumatic fever systems. The various individual experiments also showed great variation, which compounded the difficulty of attempting to differentiate between a rheumatic fever patient and a normal individual.

A delayed hypersensitivity of the so-called tuberculin type could not be demonstrated for rheumatic fever white blood cells with the tissue culture experimental systems employed in this laboratory.

Footnotes

These investigations were supported by a research grant (No. H 384 C5) from the Heart Institute of the National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, with additional financial assistance from the Mary Ruby Murphy Fund, Barth Foundation, and the Delta Delta Delta Alliance of Denver.