Studies on the Specific Mechanism of Serum Sickness

Abstract

Abstract Passive serum sickness (1) is produced by the intravenous injection of 2–10 ml of S.S.C.S. into patients who 8 hours to 9 days before were injected with horse serum. If the S.S.C.S. is injected intravenously very soon after the patient received the therapeutic horse serum, passive serum sickness does not occur. To induce passive serum sickness, some time must elapse between the treatment with horse serum and the injection of the S.S.C.S. While attempting to determine the minimal duration of this period we noted that if the interval was 5–60 minutes, passive serum sickness did not occur. Neither did the ordinary serum sickness occur in the first four patients so treated, even though the incidence of serum sickness following the use of this lot of scarlet fever antitoxin without S.S.C.S. was quite high. These results prompted us to study the efficacy of S.S.C.S. in modifying and preventing serum sickness when both the horse serum and S.S.C.S. were injected simultaneously.