The effect of lung reactive antibodies on the pathogenesis of tuberculosis.

Injections of washed mouse lung-CCT suspended in Freund's complete adjuvant were given to mice and guinea-pigs to stimulate production of homologous and heterologous mouse lung-reactive antibodies which were harvested as peritoneal ascitic fluid and serum, respectively. Reactivity of the homologous antibody was limited to relatively weak, but lung-specific, focal localization in the alveolar septa recipient mice as demonstrated by immunofluorescence studies. Only a very small portion of samples yielded positive results by the antiglobulin consumption test (AGCT). All heterologous sera were strongly active as measured by the AGCT and highly pneumotoxic when injected intravenously in 0·2 ml doses. In addition, the heterologous immune sera were strongly cross-reactive and demonstrated intense, even fluorescent staining in the glomerular basement membranes. Although the lung density technique did not prove to be useful in these studies, some evidence was obtained with it that seemed to indicate that increased densities or tuberculous involvement were produced in infected animals receiving frequent intravenous homologous lung reactive antibody injections when compared to similar animals receiving saline injections. Due to the difficulty of obtaining sufficient volumes of demonstrably sensitive homologous antibody, no further studies were performed. The effect of heterologous immune serum on experimental tuberculosis infection was an alteration in the appearance of and an increase in the number of lesions resembling a miliary spread of the organisms not seen in the controls. An index of tuberculous involvement was developed that correlated the enhanced spread of tubercle bacilli with administration of heterologous immune serum and allowed quantitation of the immune response as a function of histopathology.