FURTHER STUDIES ON BESREDKA TUBERCULIN 



J. BRONFENBRENNER and J. ROCKMAN 



(Pathological and Research Laboratories of the Western Pennsylvania 



Hospital, Pittsburg h, Pa.) 



Since the first publication by Besredka and Manoukhine/ on the 

 use of the new tuberculin of Besredka for the serum-diagnosis of 

 tuberculosis, several authors, using in some cases a technic differing 

 from the original, have reported very favorable results with this 

 tubercuHn as antigen in the complement-deviation test. Besredka 

 and Manoukhine, though expressing their confidence that their 

 method was of diagnostic value in tuberculosis, noticed from the 

 beginning that certain syphilitic sera had a tendency to fix comple- 

 ment in presence of this tuberculin. They tried, therefore, to guard 

 against possible error from this source by limiting the use of the 

 reaction to cases in which syphilis could be excluded. Several in- 

 vestigators have confirmed both the specificity of the reaction in 

 tuberculosis and the comparative frequency of positive findings 

 in Syphilis. 



Early in the year one of us had the opportunity of reporting 

 results^ of some experiments with Besredka tuberculin. The con- 

 clusions reached were, that although the reaction seemed to be spe- 

 cific in tuberculosis, yet the fact that the antigen contained lipin de- 

 rived from the medium on which the tubercle bacilli culture is 

 grown, indicates a possibility that certain non-tuberculous sera hav- 

 ing lipotropic properties, as for instance syphilitic sera, might fix the 

 complement with this antigen. In order to avoid this possible non- 

 specific reaction, it was proposed to delipinize the antigen. In a 

 large series of experiments, in which the tuberculin of Besredka 

 was deprived of lipins by means of extraction with ether, it was 

 found that the antigenic properties of the tuberculin were not 

 injured thereby.^ 



1 Besredka and Manoukhine : Compt. rend. soc. biol., 1914, Ixxvi, p. 180. 



2 J. Bronfenbrenner: Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. Med., 1914, xi, p. 92. 



3 Similar findings have been reported since by Renaux : Compt. rend. soc. 

 biol, 1914, Ixxvi, p. 865. 



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