title: Antibody-based therapies in infectious diseases.
abstract: Before antibiotics, sera from immune animals and humans were used to treat a variety of infectious diseases, often with successful results. In the beginning of the 20th century, serum therapy had taken a place in standard treatment protocols for several infectious diseases, such as meningitis, diphtheria, tetanus, and lobar pneumonia. As early as 1906, antimeningococcal serum was intravenously used as a treatment for meningitis, since it was proved to cross the blood-brain barrier. However, treatment with meningococcal antiserum was shown to be ineffective, because available antiserum was only effective against type A meningococcus, whereas type C was a more common cause of meningococcal meningitis (1). Several trials demonstrated that application of type-specific antipneumococcal serum reduced mortality in patients with lobar pneumonia by about 50%, from 30-40% to 10-20% (2). Several successes with immune serum were observed in treatment and prevention of other infectious diseases, which include Haemophilus influenzae meningitis, measles, diphtheria, hepatitis A and B, poliovirus infection, and cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection (1). However, numerous problems have been observed with immune sera, including lot-to-lot variations characterized with variable amounts of specific antibodies, occurrence of serum sickness as a complication, and some hazards in transmission of some infectious diseases (3,4).
authors.affiliation: Immunology Unit, Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine, Uludag University, Bursa, Turkey.
authors.forename: H B
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Oral
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Akdis