ON THE TOXICITY OF THE “TOXOID” PREPARATION RESPONSIBLE FOR THE KYOTO CATASTROPHE IN 1948

Abstract

Barksdale et al. (1960) described that the toxicity of the diphtheria “toxoid” preparation responsible for the Kyoto catastrophe in 1948 was equivalent to 10-20 MLD per cc for a guinea pig, and, based upon this result, made some considerations on the susceptibility of infants to diphtheria toxin. At the time of the accident, the present authors also performed ourselves detailed examinations on the toxicity of the same preparation and the toxicity was proved to be about 1/5 MLD per cc, a result quite different from that of Barksdale et al. Our own data had been presented only in Japanese (Ohtaguro, 1950), but its brief summary was published in this journal as an addendum of a paper by one of us (Kurokawa et al., 1959), which, however, Barksdale et al. did not refer to.
As we consider that the susceptibility of human beings to diphtheria toxin is much higher than that estimated by Barksdale et al. and that their description may give a fallacious interpretation to the reader about the pathogenicity of diphtheria and the significance of the detoxification test of diphtheria toxoid preparation for human use, it may be worth-while presenting our own data in detail.