Department of Bacteriology of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York.
J Exp Med. 1916 Mar 1;23(3):341-52. doi: 10.1084/jem.23.3.341.
Although antibodies can be produced by the immunization of animals with cultivated Treponema pallidum, and although these antibodies exert specific agglutinative and treponemicidal action upon the culture organisms, they possess, at least in the concentration so far obtained by us in rabbits and sheep, practically no action for virulent treponemata obtained directly from lesions. There seems to be in the infected body an inability to exert a purely serum action upon the virulent treponemata, a condition of affairs which may well lead to a lack of antigen absorption on the part of the body and a consequent failure to produce serum antibodies. We do not think that this should in any way discourage our further investigation of the protective action of antibodies produced with culture pallida. On the one hand, the slight occasional agglutination and the lower proportion of takes with the concentrated serum in the last experiment at least indicate the possibility that we have been working with sera that are not sufficiently powerful and that just as with work with the pneumococcus and other highly invasive organisms, a serum of considerable antibody contents must be used before results can be expected. Again, the destruction of treponemata and the healing of lesions which undoubtedly takes place in rabbits, sometimes with surprising speed, may be a cellular destruction, and by injecting the sera either locally or intravenously and giving them time to be absorbed by the cells before injecting virulent material, better results may be obtained. This direction of research as well as further studies on the antagonistic cellular processes against the pallida, the immunization of animals with killed virulent organisms, and the antibodies in rabbits and human beings during the course of infection and after recovery are being investigated, and we hope to be able to report upon them in the near future.
虽然可以通过用培养的苍白密螺旋体免疫动物来产生抗体，而且这些抗体对培养物中的螺旋体具有特异性的凝集和杀螺旋体作用，但它们至少在我们用兔子和绵羊获得的浓度下，对直接从病变中获得的有毒密螺旋体几乎没有作用。受感染的体内似乎无法对有毒密螺旋体产生纯粹的血清作用，这种情况很可能导致身体对抗原的吸收不足，并因此未能产生血清抗体。我们认为，这不应以任何方式阻止我们进一步研究用培养的苍白密螺旋体产生的抗体的保护作用。一方面，在最后一次实验中，浓缩血清偶尔出现轻微的凝集，且阳性率较低，至少表明我们使用的血清可能不够有效，就像用肺炎球菌和其他高度侵袭性的生物体进行的工作一样，在期望结果之前，必须使用含有相当抗体含量的血清。此外，在兔子中无疑会发生密螺旋体的破坏和病变的愈合，有时速度惊人，这可能是一种细胞破坏，通过局部或静脉内注射血清，并在注射有毒物质之前给它们时间被细胞吸收，可以获得更好的结果。我们正在研究这一研究方向以及对苍白密螺旋体的拮抗细胞过程的进一步研究、用杀死的有毒生物体对动物进行免疫，以及在感染过程中和康复后兔子和人类的抗体，我们希望能够在不久的将来报告这些研究结果。
