Complement fixation in tuberculosis

In a recent communication to the New York Pathological Society, the material of which is to appear in the American Journal of Medical Sciences, the writers described work on complement-fixation in tuberculosis, carried out with a very simple antigen which had yielded and is still yielding results more satisfactory than those hitherto reported by other workers who had used other antigens. The work followed a study of culture-filtrate antigens, such as those devised by Besredka and by Petroff, and the special modifications of the Besredka medium employed by Bronfen-Brenner and by Craig. These antigens did not in our hands react with the regularity which we thought should attend a reaction of specific diagnostic value. Owing to irregularities perhaps due to constituents of the media, it was thought wise to return to the bacillary substances themselves, work along this line having been attended by considerable success within recent years—notably in the hands of Radcliffe, Dudgeon, Weir, and Stimson. It should not be forgotten that the same direction of investigation was followed in the earlier work of Wassermann and Citron and in that of Calmette.

The method employed is in general identical with that which we have been using in this laboratory for the extraction of Treponema pallidurn, typhoid bacilli and streptococci, and differs in no essential particular from the so-called “ endotoxin ” extraction method employed by Besreclka in 1906 with organisms of the typhoid-colon group. Since we feel that the procedure at present in use in the Columbia laboratory should be thoroughly reinvestigated by other workers, we believe that it is proper to give in great detail the method by which the antigen is made.

The bacilli which, so far, have been used for the production of the antigen have been of the human type, some of them isolated by Miller, some of them obtained from Professor Theobald Smith, some from the laboratory of Professor William H. Park, and some from the laboratory of Parke Davis & Co. They have been grown mainly on the gentian-violet medium of Petroff and on Miller's modification of this medium; also on Petroff's potato broth.