HYPOTHERMIA AND BACTERIAL TOXINS 



BLAIR: Yes. 



CAMPBELL: Concerning the basic immune mechanism, this 

 occurred to me. I wonder if anyone has studied the effect of 

 hypothermia on the threshhold reaction to histamine acetycho- 

 line, or so-called slow reacting substance. That would be a 

 fairly interesting problem, 



NORTHEY: Well, I'd just like to add to that a little. We have 

 done some preliminary studies in which we sensitized cold 

 exposed and control Guinea pigs to egg albumin and later on 

 moved the uterine horn and/or a strip of smooth muscle from 

 the intestine. With both the egg albumin antigen and histamine 

 we stimulated these tissues in the cold exposed and non-cold 

 exposed Guinea pigs. The responses were measured on a physio- 

 graph. In these preliminary experiments which were made with 

 ten or twelve animals per study group, we were able to see 

 no significant differences in the responses of the cold exposed 

 animals from those in the controls. 



BLAIR: I can't remember the details, but the Schwartzman 

 phenomenon was studied. I don't know if this falls strictly in- 

 to the category that you mentioned, but the cutaneous mani- 

 festations are delayed, and if they do appear, they are consider- 

 ably less, 



TRAPANI: Is that because skin temperature is different from 

 core temperature? 



BLAIR: No, this is a stabilized state and during stabilized 

 hypothermia, the gradient between the skin and the core is very 

 much the same in the hypothermia as it is without the hypo- 

 thermia, so the skin temperature, of course, is lower, and this 

 might be part of that. The blood flow to the skin has been mea- 

 sured in hypothermia and during this stabilized state. It is re- 

 duced, but not considerably. It is markedly reduced, of course, 

 during the period of cooling, but in the so-called steady state, 

 the blood flow to the skin is fairly substantial. 



TRAPANI: But you can still have an actual temperature effect, 



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