Department of Bacteriology of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York.
J Exp Med. 1915 Jun 1;21(6):576-82. doi: 10.1084/jem.21.6.576.
It has been shown by our experiments that the serum of rabbits treated with emulsions of Treponema pallidum contains agglutinating substances. Normal rabbit serum also possesses agglutinating power for this organism, but, as in the case of normal bacterial agglutinins, to an extent very much inferior to that possessed by the sera of immunized animals. Normal human sera will agglutinate similar pallidum emulsions, as will the sera of certain syphilitic patients with positive Wassermann reactions. Whether or not there is a quantitative difference of diagnostic value between the sera of normal human beings and those of syphilitics remains to be seen. The sera of rabbits immunized with strain A agglutinate Noguchi's strain 9 in dilutions as high as 1 to 500. We regard as the most important result of these experiments the demonstration of definite antibodies in the circulation of animals treated with dead emulsions of Treponema pallidum. Since it is our belief that the agglutinating effect is due to an antibody essentially the same as that which produces bactericidal, precipitating, and opsonic effects, i. e., that there is probably one type of antibody only, we believe that the demonstration of agglutinins establishes the fact that in syphilis as in bacterial diseases the host responds by the formation of antibodies or sensitizers specific for the treponema. Spirocheticidal experiments with these sera, both in vitro and in vivo, are in progress.
我们的实验表明，用梅毒螺旋体乳剂处理后的兔子血清中含有凝集物质。正常兔血清也对这种生物体具有凝集力，但与免疫动物的血清相比，其程度要低得多，就像正常细菌凝集素一样。正常人和某些梅毒阳性瓦瑟曼反应患者的血清可凝集类似的苍白螺旋体乳液。正常人的血清和梅毒患者的血清之间是否存在有诊断价值的定量差异还有待观察。用 A 株免疫的兔子血清可在 1 比 500 的稀释度下凝集 Noguchi 的 9 株。我们认为这些实验最重要的结果是证明用死梅毒螺旋体乳剂处理的动物循环中有明确的抗体。由于我们相信凝集作用是由于一种与产生杀菌、沉淀和调理作用基本相同的抗体引起的，即可能只有一种类型的抗体，因此我们认为凝集素的存在证明了在梅毒和细菌性疾病中，宿主通过形成针对梅毒螺旋体的特异性抗体或敏化剂来作出反应。这些血清的体外和体内杀螺旋体实验正在进行中。
