Agglutinin Formation Within the Lymph Nodes of Resistant and Susceptible Mice

An accompanying paper has reported the formation of agglutinins within lymph nodes following intradermal injection of killed cultures of bacteria in the ears of mice. Earlier work from this laboratory has shown such intradermal injections to be largely intralymphatic. After injections of killed bacteria into the ear of an animal a cervical lymph node draining the lymphatic capillaries enlarges and a week later agglutinins in high concentration can be found within it. At this time the blood shows a lower concentration of agglutinin and the lymph nodes elsewhere in the body yield no demonstrable antibody. It is evident that the procedure engenders, in the early days of the immunizing process, a high concentration of agglutinin in a localized region.

We have experimented to find whether the lymph nodes of strains of generally susceptible and resistant mice developed by Webster 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 differ in the ability to form agglutinins to certain bacteria to which they are susceptible and resistant respectively, and to other organisms against which their relative resistance is unknown.

Approximately 200 mice of each of the strains mentioned were obtained through the courtesy of Doctor Webster. A similar number of stock white mice of the ordinary laboratory mixed strain were employed for comparison. In each experiment groups of 12–20 mice from each strain were injected in the skin of both ears with killed cultures of various agglutinin forming bacteria, B. enteritides, B. paratyphosus-B or B. prodigiosus, using but one antigen in each experiment. The cervical lymph nodes draining the ears were removed after varying intervals up to 10 days following the last injection, and the animals were bled for serum. The individual nodes from the mice of each group were pooled and extracted and the titre of the extract was compared with that of the serum, and with that of the node extracts and sera of the other groups.