Lytic Effect of Bacterial Products on Lymphocytes of Tuberculous Animals

Introduction. Buffy coats or splenic explants from tuberculous guinea pigs1 or tuberculous rabbits2 are killed when grown in concentrations of tuberculin which are harmless for normal animal tissue explants. This phenomenon is not a manifestation of anaphylaxis, for tissue culture explants from animals sensitized to horse serum are not injured by horse serum added to the cultural fluid.3 The cytotoxic effect is disease specific, however for tuberculin will not injure tissue culture explants from guinea pigs infected with the streptococcus which causes chronic lymphoadenitis in the guinea pig, whereas a soluble protein derived from the homologous streptococcus will cause cell death in tissue culture explants from guinea pigs showing the delayed type of skin hypersensitivity to streptococcal protein.4 These studies have been done with explants composed of a variety of cell types and observations have been made after 18 hours in order to measure the degree of cellular migration as well as change in cell morp...