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Quantitative Study of Local Passive Transfer of Tuberculin Sensitivity with Peritoneal Exudate Cells in the Guinea Pig¹

From the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology, Harvard Medical School, and the Neurology Service, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

Abstract

The peritoneal exudate cells of tuberculin sensitive guinea pigs, used in earlier surviving cell culture experiments, were shown to produce small but typical delayed reactions when mixed with antigen and injected into the skin of normal guinea pig recipients. Injection of the same mixtures intracorneally produced an opacity lasting 48 hr, not produced by injection of control mixtures. In newborn animals as recipients, local passive skin reactions could not be produced. By injecting multiple doses of antigen and cells into single (sometimes two) recipients and by measuring the volumes of the reactions as precisely as possible, we obtained characteristic dose response curves. High concentrations of tuberculin (1:20-1:5) inhibited the passive reactions in many of these experiments. Incubation of the cells with antigen before injection and incubation of the cells before addition of antigen failed to produce the release of inflammatory agents, of antibody, or of cells with increased reactivity. Suspensions of spleen cells failed to produce well defined transferred reactions. It is concluded that the transferred cells react directly with antigen at the injected site and that a volume increase of the transferred cells comparable to that seen in surviving cell culture, with or without actual cell multiplication, is sufficient to account for the size of the reactions observed in the absence of participation by the recipient's own cells.

Footnotes

¹ This study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (E-1257) and from the Kresge Foundation.