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Phagocytosis of Tubercle Bacilli by Rabbit Pulmonary Alveolar Macrophages and its Relation to Native Resistance to Tuberculosis¹

From the Henry Phipps Institute, Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Abstract

Pulmonary alveolar macrophages (AM) of rabbits inbred for resistance and susceptibility to tuberculosis were compared with respect to their ability to ingest tubercle bacilli in vitro. AM from the resistant T family ingested about twice as many bacilli as those from the susceptible C and FCCa families. This was due to differences in the number of phagocytes ingesting bacilli rather than differences in the number of bacilli ingested by each phagocyte.

These results suggest that the AM of certain susceptible inbred rabbit families trap fewer bacilli from the alveolar air. This could explain why they were resistant to attack by tuberculosis via the respiratory route, even though they were highly susceptible to its progress.

Footnotes

¹ Supported by Contract Nonr-551(24) with the Office of Naval Research and by Grants AI-02048 and FR-00014 from the National Institutes of Health, USPHS. Presented in part at the 1963 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Immunologists (1).