An Examination of the Treponemal Wassermann Reaction and Reiter Protein Complement-Fixation Test

Lessthanoneyearafter thedescription oftheTreponemapallidum by Schaudinn andHoffman, thefirst report oftheapplication ofthecomplementfixation reaction ofBordet andGengou(1901) to thediagnosis ofhumansyphilis waspublished in Budapest byDetre(1906), exactly 2weeksafter the appearance oftheclassical paperASero-diagnostic Reaction inSyphilis byWassermann, Neisser, and Bruck(1906). Theseworkers usedantigens consisting ofsaline extracts oftissues knowntocontain large numbersoftreponemata, anddeemedthatthe antigens ofthese treponemata wereresponsible for theobserved specificity oftheir tests. Within ayear, however, itwasfound thatserviceableantigens forthediagnosis ofsyphilis could be prepared fromnormaltissues (Marie andLevaditi, 1907; Landsteiner, Muller, andPoetzl, 1907), and within 4 yearsantigens derived fromalcoholic extracts ofheart muscle withaddedcholesterol were inuse(Browning, Cruickshank, andM'Kenzie, 1910; Sachs, 1911), andthese, withdevelopments andmodifications, haveremained thebasis ofthe sero-diagnosis ofsyphilis. Sincetheintroduction oftheTreponemal Immobilization (TPI) test byNelson andMayer(1949), theintense research oftheearly years ofthecentury hasbeenmirrored bya world-wide returnto Wassermann andDetre's original concept, andan increasing numberoftests using antigens derived frombothvirulent andavirulent strains oftreponematahavebeenintroduced. Thesetests detect not onlyWassermann antibody (reagin) butother antibodies foundintheseraofpatients suffering from thetreponematoses, andhaveallowed conclusions tobedrawnontheantigenic structure ofT.pallidum. TableIshowstheprobable antigenic structure of boththeNichols andReiter strains oftreponemata. TheTableisconstructed tostress their similarity rather thantheir considerable differences. Itisnot unlikely thatthere areother antigens, orthatsome, forexample theprotein fraction, aremixtures of antigens. Thestructure oftheNichols strain was deduced fromagglutination studies byHardyand Nell(1955, 1957), andthatoftheReiter treponeme byD'Alessandro andOddo(1948) andD'Alessandro, Oddo,andDardanoni (1950) bothfrom agglutination studies andbychemical fractionation.