The Skin Reaction Caused by the Diluted Dharmendra Antigen

Abstract

The preparation of lepromin must be made at present using the leprous nodules, because the leprosy bacilli can not be cultivated in the artificial medium. With a progress in the chemotherapy of leprosy, however, it becomes more and more difficult to obtain leprous nodules containing many bacilli. Therefore, it will be important that the diluted lepromin can be used for the skin either or not. The relation between the skin reaction caused by the diluted antigen and that due to the standard antigen, therefore, was investigated on the frequency distribution curves of the reaction size. The results obtained were as follows;
The size of the non-specific reaction did not change so much due to the dilution of Dharmendra antigen. On the other hand, the size of the specific reaction decreased in the reaction caused by the diluted Dharmendra antigen. Considering the decrease of the size of the specific reaction by means of the dilution of antigen and the rate of the negative reactor due to the diluted antigen in the positive reactor to the standard antigen, it seemed that the dilution of Dharmendra antigen will be under 1: 2 for the practical use. The criteria for reading the reactions due to the diluted antigen should be settled newly apart from the criteria due to the standard Dharmendra antigen. Therefore, the auothers settled a new criteria in the reactions caused by the antigen in a dilution of 1:2.