Studies on a complement fixation test for Herpes simplex.

Although the neutralization test is, in general, satisfactory for immunologic studies with a diversity of viruses, it is cumbersome and expensive. The complement fixation test, in contrast, is simple and rapid and has been successfully applied to a number of viral diseases, especially for diagnostic purposes. In the case of herpes simplex virus infections, however, the literature concerning the applicability and usefulness of the fixation method is at considerable variance; on the whole, positive reactions have been elicited with difficulty, and the basic problem lies in the preparation of an adequately potent and specific antigen. Thus, while some early workers (Kraus and Takaki, 1925, 1926; Takaki, Bonis, and Koref, 1926) obtained fixation when testing human or rabbit immune sera against a rabbit brain antigen, others (Greenbaum and Harkins, 1925; Todorovitch, 1925; Bedson and Crawford, 1927; Schultz and Hoyt, 1928; Tang and Castaneda, 1929; Gay and Holden, 1931; Myers and Chapman, 1937), using antigens prepared from rabbit brain or herpetic vesicle epithelium or fluid from guinea pigs and rabbit immune sera of high neutralizing capacity, were unable to confirm these results. The failure of such systems may most probably be attributed to the nonspecific and anticomplementary activity of crude rabbit brain suspensions (Maltaner, 1946) and rabbit serum (Kidd and Friedewald, 1942); whatever the difficulty, specific fixation could be elicited in systems employing suspensions of infected guinea pig pads and guinea pig immune sera (Bedson and Bland, 1929) or sera from patients with herpetic infections (Brain, 1932).