Paraimmunity

PARAIMMUNITY, a state of immunity to a particular concomitant microbe (paramicrobe) arising in parallel with the development of immunity to the primary pathogen. The basis of paraimmunity lies in the phenomena of symbiosis; the cohabiting microbes influence each other in a definite way, resulting in an alteration of the serological properties of the concomitant microbe, thus creating a new biological type close to that of the primary microbe (see Paraagglutination). The doctrine of paraimmunity is a new doctrine, recognized far from by all immunobiologists. Its experimental foundation was provided chiefly in the experiments of Zilber. By cultivating Proteus vulgaris in a collodial sac immersed in a typhoid culture and then plating it from the sac onto Petri dishes with carbolic agar, Zilber obtained a strain of Proteus "which was quite distinctly and sufficiently highly agglutinated by typhoid antiserum" (paraproteus). Having obtained the paraproteus strain, the author immunized rabbits with it; the antiserum thus obtained agglutinated the typhoid culture in titers (in various rabbits)—1:6,400, 1:3,200, 1:1,600, 1:800, 1:400, and 1:100. Cross-experiments showed that the parastrain (paraproteus) induces immunity to the pathogenic microbe (typhoid bacillus) and vice versa—the pathogenic microbe to the parastrain. In another series of experiments, Zilber studied the mechanism of the emergence of Proteus X₁₉ from Proteus vulgaris. Hauser's Prot. vulgaris was inoculated into defibrinated blood of a typhus patient taken on the 4th–6th day of the disease (according to Griltz's method); after 4–5 days of growth in the typhus blood, the Proteus was subcultured onto ordinary neutral agar. As a result, a strain was obtained which began to be agglutinated by typhus antiserum at a dilution of 1:200 with complete clearing of the liquid. A collodial sac filled with an emulsion of an agar culture of the above-described Proteus was introduced into the peritoneal cavity of a guinea pig 4–7 days after the latter had been infected with typhus blood. The sacs were removed when the guinea pig's temperature began to drop; the emulsion was plated onto neutral agar, and agglutination was set up 24 hours later. As a result—the appearance of the ability to be agglutinated by typhus antiserum and the approximation of Proteus vulgaris to Proteus X₁₉. Thus, the introduction of the typhus virus into the organism is accompanied by the development of immunity against Proteus, which alters its properties under the influence of this virus. In the experiments of Cantacuzène and his school, as well as Zlatogorov, non-scarinal streptococci approached scarlatinal streptococci in their properties; in view of this, the role of streptococcus in the etiology of scarlet fever can be explained by parainfection; from this point of view, immunity to scarlet fever, partially developing as a result of the introduction of scarlatinal streptococcus and scarlatinal toxin into the organism, can be viewed as a phenomenon of paraimmunity. In cases of poliomyelitis, encephalitis, herpes zoster, and influenza, Rosenow isolated streptococci that produced these diseases in monkeys even to a sharper degree than the specific causative agents. Thus, the phenomena of parainfection undoubtedly occupy a prominent place in pathology, and paraimmunity occupies the same place in it (Zlatogorov, Barykin, Zilber, Salimbeni).