Antitoxin

An antitoxin is an antibody that can neutralize a specific toxin (or poison). Certain plants, animals, and bacteria produce them, when they are exposed to a toxin. Antitoxins can also be injected into another organism, as a treatment against an infectious disease. To produce an antitoxin, a safe dose of a toxin is injected into an animal. The animal will then produce an antitoxin. Later, blood is taken from the animal, and the antitoxin is extracted from it. It will be purified, and can be used.

History of antitoxin

Antitoxins to diphtheria and tetanus toxins were produced by Emil Adolf von Behring and his colleagues from 1890 onwards. The use of diphtheria antitoxin for the treatment of diphtheria was regarded by The Lancet as the "most important advance of the [19th] Century in the medical treatment of acute infectious disease".

In 1888, Behring was sent to Berlin for a brief service at the Academy for Military Medicine. In 1889, he joined the Institute for Hygiene of the University of Berlin, then headed by Robert Koch. Between 1889 and 1895, Behring developed his pioneering ideas on serum therapy and his theory of antitoxins.

Early 1887, in Bonn, Behring had found that the serum of tetanus-immune white rats contained a substance that neutralized anthrax bacilli. He recognized this as the source of their "resistance". On 4 December 1890, Behring and Kitasato Shibasaburō published their first paper on blood-serum therapy. On 11 December, another report, signed by Behring, discussed blood-serum therapy not only in the treatment of tetanus, but also in diphtheria.

When Paul Ehrlich demonstrated in 1891 that even vegetable poisons led to the formation of antitoxins in an organism, Behring's theory was confirmed.

Antitoxins are antibody proteins found within the serum of animals that have been injected with the toxin. Separating unnecessary proteins from the antibodies used to counter infections in medical practice is important to increase both potency of antitoxin doses and to reduced the incidence of serum sickness. Annie Homer, working in Canada during the First World War, undertook research into antitoxic sera, which resulted in innovative methods to manufacture high quality antitoxin protein fractions from serum.

An antitoxin for scarlet fever was developed in 1924, simultaneously by Raymond Dochez and Gladys and George Frederick Dick.