Relationship of Penicillin Therapy to Brain Involvement in Experimental Relapsing Fever

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Abstract
Rats injd. intraperit. with tick-infected rat blood were treated early or late with varying intraperit. doses of penicillin. In the early treatment group, the blood was free of spirochetes in 5-6 hrs. Seven days after termination of treatment, the brains of all surviving rats were injd. intraperit. to fresh rats. Dark-field examinations showed that in the brain passage from late treatment rats, the fresh rats became infected. In the early treatment group, the cleared brains in passage failed to infect the fresh rats. Early dosage not only cleared the blood stream but generally prevented brain involvement, although not in all cases.