Charles W. Israel

Recovery of spirochagetes in the monkey by passive transfer from human late sero-negative syphilis.

The discovery of treponemes, staining with fluorescein-tagged anti-Treponema pallidum globulin in various tissues of patients with late sero-negative ocular and neurosyphilis, was reported by Smith and Israel (1967a). The purpose of this paper is to document the results of passive transfer of these spirochaetes to the experimental primate. Although notes on the following case were included in a previous report (Smith and Israel, 1967a), the recovery oftreponemes from the patients aqueous humour, cerebrospinal fluid, and liver, and the results of passive transfer of these treponemes from both cerebrospinal fluid and aqueous humour to two squirrel monkeys, were thought sufficiently important to warrant a more detailed consideration of the clinical data. An additional fact of importance was that the patients serum showed false negative reactions to both the TPI and FTA-ABS tests.