A number of workers have observed the very interesting fact that during the period of incubation of tetanus, and in some cases during the early symptoms, in certain animals tetanus toxin is present in the circulating blood. Perhaps the most notable of these observations was that recorded by Bolton, Firch and Walden 2 in their' report on the cases of tetanus, including seven deaths therefrom, fo...

PURPOSE Recombinant subunit vaccines provide safe and targeted protection against microbial infections. However, the protective efficacy of recombinant subunit vaccines tends to be less potent than the whole cell vaccines, especially when they are administered through mucosal routes. We have reported that a bacterial flagellin has strong mucosal adjuvant activity to induce protective immune res...

In this study, the immunogenicities of the nontoxic H(C) fragment of tetanus toxin and derivatives lacking ganglioside binding activity were compared with that of tetanus toxoid after subcutaneous immunization of mice. Wild-type H(C) (H(C)WT) protein and tetanus toxoid both elicited strong antibody responses against toxoid and H(C) antigens and provided complete protection against toxin challen...

Noradrenaline release from rat brain cortical synaptosomes permeabilized with streptolysin O can be triggered by microM concentrations of free Ca2+. This process was inhibited within minutes by tetanus toxin and its isolated light chain, but not by its heavy chain. The data demonstrate that the effect of tetanus toxin on NA release from purified synaptosomes is caused by the intraterminal actio...

Germfree rats were challenged orally and intrarectally with spores of Clostridium tetani. Although C. tetani spores remained viable in the intestinal tract, they were unable to germinate. Germfree rats were then challenged orally with vegetative cells of C. tetani. Vegetative cells were able to colonize the intestinal tract, replicate, and produce toxin. Tetanus antitoxin, but no tetanus toxin,...

The action of tetanus toxin on the motor system in experimental tetanus relating to the clinical one was reviewed. Special attention was paid to several controversial results in recent years.

An epileptiform syndrome in rats produced by injecting small doses (a few (mouse)LD50) of tetanus toxin into the hippocampus is described. The animals had intermittent seizures, with at least a superficial resemblance to human epilepsy, for some weeks but they eventually recovered. They were hyperkinetic for several weeks after the injection of toxin, and showed intermittent aggressive behaviou...

Tetanus toxin was shown to contain a metal-binding site for zinc and copper. Equilibrium dialysis binding experiments using 65Zn indicated an association constant of 9-15 microM, with one zinc-binding site/toxin molecule. The zinc-binding site was localized to the toxin light chain as determined by binding of 65Zn to the light chain but not to the heavy chain after separation by sodium dodecyl ...

Whether exocytosis evoked by a given releasing stimulus from different neuronal families or by different stimuli from one neuronal population occurs through identical mechanisms is unknown. We studied the release of [3H]noradrenaline, [3H]acetylcholine and [3H]dopamine induced by different stimuli from superfused rat brain synaptosomes pretreated with tetanus toxin or botulinum toxin F, known t...