THE CULTIVATION AND IMMUNOLOGICAL REACTIONS OF THE GLOBOID BODIES IN POLIOMYELITIS

Abstract

Two additional cultures of globoid bodies, obtained from the nervous tissues of monkeys in which experimental poliomyelitis was produced, and identical with the original cultures described by Flexner and Noguchi, are reported in this paper. The highly parasitic cultures, like Treponema pallidum, are refractory to artificial cultivation. After long cultivation outside the body, the globoid bodies acquire saprophytic properties and then grow more readily and in a considerable variety of media, provided, however, that they carry a certain quantity of protein matter not denatured. The rabbit responds slightly with the production of antibodies to the injection of cultures of the globoid bodies. The monkey responds only occasionally under the same conditions and apparently only when the cultures are injected into the central nervous system. This response is small and at most leads to slight reactions of agglutination and complement deviation with the cultures. The serum obtained from monkeys recovered from experimental poliomyelitis shows even less agglutination and no complement deviation. The maximal agglutinative and morphological changes produced in the globoid bodies cultivated in immune monkey serum are obtained in the first generation; after several subcultures in the immune serum, the reversion to normal takes place in one generation in a non-immune medium. The serum of human beings in the acute or early subacute stages of poliomyelitis gives no complement deviation with the antigen derived from the globoid bodies. The cultivation of the saprophytized globoid bodies through several generations in immune monkey or human serum did not confer upon them pathogenic properties for monkeys. The serum of human beings and monkeys which have survived attacks of poliomyelitis does not fix complement in the presence of antigens prepared from organs of the monkey succumbing to the experimental disease. The globoid bodies and Treponema pallidum present many analogies in cultural, immunological, and pathogenic properties.