Modification of antityphus antibodies on passage through the gut of the human body louse with discussion of some epidemiologic and evolutionary implications.

Evidence is presented to indicate that proteolytic and perhaps other enzymes of the louse midgut, essential to the nutrition of the louse, perform molecular dissection on the antirickettsial antibodies present in the blood of a typhus-immune host that selectively destroys, along with other functions, the portion of the antibody that determines the only known function by which antirickettsial antibodies may operate in host defense mechanisms, namely, opsonization of rickettsiae for enhanced ingestion by professional phagocytes and subsequent destruction. The epidemiologic significance of these findings is discussed in relation to the progressive destruction of cells that produce digestive enzymes of the louse midgut that occurs with progressive rickettsial infection, and the possibility of a negative feedback mechanism in transmission is introduced. Speculations that involve evolutionary concepts of both convergent and divergent varieties with respect to rickettsiae, potentially operational in a system that consists of an obligate blood-sucking arthropod vector and a vertebrate host capable of adaptive responses to both vector and rickettsial agent, are presented.