Allergic Reactions to Streptococcus Antigens

In a preliminary communication (1) we reported briefly on what we believe to be allergic skin reactions occurring after intracutaneous injections of derivatives of hemolytic and nonhemolytic streptococci. The present paper describes these observations in more detail, and reports extensions of this work carried on during the past two years. Antigens. Most of the observations were made with derivatives of hemolytic and non-hemolytic streptococci obtained from a variety of sources. A few strains of Staphylococcus aureus and albus, Pfeiffer bacillus, B. coli, B. typhosus, B. paratyphosus A and B were also tested. Apparently the same type of reaction occurs in certain individuals with derivations of some strains of these organisms; some of these filtrates, however, caused reactions which seem to be due to primarily toxic substances, rather than, as in the case of the streptococcus antigens, acquired reactions to substances inactive in non-allergic individuals. Hemolytic and non-hemolytic streptococci were obtained from throats of normal people, from infected sinuses, from blood cultures of patients with bacterial endocarditis, and from the interior of tonsils removed at operation during convalescence from the-matic fever. From the streptococci obtained from such sources we have prepared antigens in several ways. This report deals only with results obtained with filtrates from plain broth cultures and an antigen prepared by centrifuging broth (1 per cent peptone) cultures pipetting off the supernatant broth as completely as possible, grinding the sediment for three to four hours in an agate mortar with powdered glass, extracting the ground bacteria for twenty-four hours with N/100 NaOH and passing the extract through a Mandler candle. One preparation, therefore, contains the soluble substances which by metabolic activity or by bacterial disintegration accumulate in a fluid medium; the other preparation consists obviously of a mixture of essentially intracellular constituents of the bacterial body, and this we shall refer to as the intracellular antigen.