Abstract
In 1948 Middlebrook and Dubos demonstrated that sheep's red blood cells, when sensitized with extracts of tubercle bacilli or tuberculin, are rendered specifically agglutinable by the sera of tuberculous patients and of immunized animals. A new method of test, based on Middlebrook's technique of onhibition of the hemagglutination reaction, which might serve as a guide in diagnosing the degree of activity of tuberculous disease, was developed in 1951 by Okada et al., and was called OMK reaction test. It consists in the determination of tuberculin in the urine of tuberculous patients.
The present paper is concerned with the determination of tuberculin in the urine of rabbits in OMK reaction. Rabbits were given intravenous amounts of OT., in doses of 10ml., 5ml., and 2ml., and their urine was investigated for tuberculin at intervals of 3 hours in the first 24 hours and at the end of another 23 hours following injections.
The results of experiments show that, in the rabbits which had received either 10ml. or 5ml. of OT, tuberculin was demonstrated to be present in the urine 3 and 6 hours after injections, but it was not detected thereafter, and that, in the rabbits which had been given 2ml. of OT., no tuberculin was demonstrated to be present in the urine at any time during the period of observations. These results would seem to indicate that it will be difficult to demonstrate tuberculin in the urine of tuberculous patients unless there are very large amounts of tuberculin circulating in vivo.
