Filtration Studies on Reactive Infusion Fluids. ∗

This is a report of attempts to remove by various methods of filtration the reactive agent or agents from infusion fluids known to cause a reaction when injected intravenously. The reaction is characterized in the human being and in the dog by fever, often chills, vomiting and other gastrointestinal disturbances. The fever begins 30 to 45 minutes after injection, reaches its height in 2 to 3 hours, and then begins to recede until in 4 to 6 hours it has fallen to practically normal. In all our experiments in which a leucocyte count was made, there was also found a leucopenia accompanying the reaction reaching its highest intensity 45 minutes after the injection.

Seibert 1 showed that the cause of this febrile reaction in some distilled waters was a gram negative microorganism which has since been called the “pyrogenic bacterium”. She further demonstrated that it was not the organism itself, but its products which caused the reaction and that the latter were filtrable through a Berkefeld filter.

In our experiments, 2 lots of reactive water were used, namely, water drawn from the tap and a rather turbid water from a laboratory aquarium. The water was boiled, filtered through fine filter paper and sodium chloride added to make a saline solution of 0.9%. The purpose of adding sodium chloroide was to avoid hemolysis.

The filtration methods used in this investigation were: (1) “dense” Jena filter crucible; (2) Berkefeld filter “W”; (3) Seitz E.K. filter of compressed asbestos; (4) Zsigmondy ultrafilters (gelatinous esters of cellulose) of graded porosity.

Dogs were used as test animals. Richet 2 gives the normal temperature of dogs as 39.25°C. or 102.65°F. In our study of 20 apparently normal dogs, the temperature was found to lie between 100.4°F. and 102.6°F.