Title:

Prevention of Pneumococcal Pneumonia by Immunization with Specific Capsular Polysaccharides

Creator:

Heidelberger, Michael
MacLeod, Colin M. (Colin Munro), 1909-1972
Hodges, Richard G.
Bernhard, William G.

Date:

November 1945

Description:

Between the Fall of 1942 and Spring of 1944, an epidemic of pneumococcal pneumonia struck 1,500 among the almost 10,000 trainees at an Army Air Force Technical School in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. In collaboration with military physicians, Heidelberger devised a field trial to test whether injections of half the soldiers in the camp with a combination of purified polysaccharides of the four specific pneumococcal types most prevalent among the soldiers--types I, II, V, and VII--would impart immunity against these types. Heidelberger prepared the purified polysaccharide antigens with the help of the pharmaceutical company E. R. Squibb. Colin MacLeod (who, also in 1944, along with Oswald Avery and Maclyn McCarty discovered that genes were made of DNA) organized the trial, which was overseen on site by military physicians Richard Hodges and William Bernhard. In this article, the four leaders of the study presented their successful findings: incidences of pneumonia caused by the four pneumococcal types whose polysaccharide antigens were injected fell to near zero among the inoculated population within two weeks, while pneumonias caused by two other types (IV and XII) remained prevalent, as did all forms of pneumonia among soldiers who had not received inoculations. The overall incidence of pneumonia, however, was much reduced because inoculation of every other soldier impeded transmission of the disease.

Periodical:

Journal of Experimental Medicine

Publisher:

Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research

Rights:

Reproduced from the Journal of Experimental Medicine, 1945, 82, 445-465 by copyright permission of the Rockefeller University Press.

Genre:

Articles

Subject:

Pneumococcal Infections and Polysaccharides

Format:

Text

Extent:

21 pages

Language:

English

Legacy Source Citation:

Periodical. MacLeod, Colin M., Richard G. Hodges, Michael Heidelberger, and William G. Bernhard. "Prevention of Pneumococcal Pneumonia by Immunization with Specific Capsular Polysaccharides." Journal of Experimental Medicine 82, 6 (November 1945): 445-465. Article. 21 Images.. Journal of Experimental Medicine

Legacy ID:

DHBBCN

NLM ID:

101584940X32

Profiles Collection:

The Michael Heidelberger Papers

Shareable Link:

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/101584940X32

Story Section:

Antigens and Antibodies: Heidelberger and The Rise of Quantitative Immunochemistry, 1928-1954