Antigenic relationships and toxicity of mucinolytic preparations from Vibrio comma and related vibrios.

The products of infection with Vibrio comma (Vibrio cholerae), which are responsible for the severe purging diarrhea characteristic of the disease, have not yet been clearly demonstrated. To provide a rational basis for development of more efficient immunization practices, such information on the relation of vibrio products to specific pathology is required. Various kinds of toxic materials from the vibrio cell have been described by Burrows et al. (1944a, 1944b, 1944c), which may be implicated in pathologic processes of cholera, and recent observations focus attention on enzymatic activities of vibrios. Burnet and Stone (1947), Singer et al. (1948), Narayanan et al. (1953), and Gurkipal et al. (1953) have reported that filtrates from vibrio cultures cause sloughing of epithelium from isolated strips of guinea pig ileum, and that this effect is neutralized by specific antiserum. Also, Lam and Mandle (1954) have demonstrated that such filtrates increase the permeability of isolated intestinal loops from the mouse. Further studies of these activities have led to immunological characterizations of vibrio mucinases (Jensen, 1953; Freter, 1955) and to consideration of the possible effect of their incorporation in cholera vaccines. Thus, the relationship of vibrio mucinolytic activity to pathogenesis currently is a key question. Determination of whether there is a rise in titer of mucinase-inhibiting antibody in sera of cholera patients would seem to be a reasonable approach to a study of the problem. However, the variable results obtained by others (Goodner, 1955 personal communication) suggested that, perhaps, before meaningful results could be expected, the testing procedures themselves needed investigation. It seemed possible that antigenic differences in mucinases of different strains of vibrios could explain some of the ob-