Anti-Tryptic Activity of Synovial Fluid in Patients With Various Types of Arthritis 1

For many years it has been known that blood plasma is capable of inhibiting the action of pro-teolytic ferments, and especially trypsin. The presence of this property of blood plasma prob-ably plays a part in limiting the damage to tissue by inflammatory exudates containing large num-bers of polymorphonuclear leukocytes. In view of the fact that blood plasma possesses anti-tryptic properties, it was of interest to us to determine whether or not similar properties could be de-tected in synovial fluid from patients with various types of arthritis. Further, we were interested in knowing whether these qualities of the synovial fluid fluctuated in various cases. In all, we stud-ied sixty-five samples of synovial fluid from forty-five cases of arthritis, including thirty cases of gonococcal arthritis, five cases of rheumatic fever, six cases of rheumatoid arthritis and four cases in which there was an accumulation of synovial fluid into a joint following injury. Inasmuch as the procedures differed with various experiments, the methods will be described with the individual experiments. The demonstration of anti-tryptic substances in synovial fluid Presentation of data: The first set of experiments was designed to determine whether or not synovial fluid would in-hibit the action of trypsin when it was mixed with casein. One cubic centimeter of 1 per cent tryp-sin solution was mixed with 5 cc. of 1 per cent solution of casein, made up to a volume of 10 cc. and placed in the incubator at 370 C. for twenty-four hours. At the same time, similar mixtures containing synovial fluid, 0.1, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.8 cc., respectively, were incubated for twenty-four hours. At the end of this period, nonprotein