Opsonins Sentence Examples
On the contrary the labile opsonins of normal serum have a comparatively general action on different organisms. It is quite evident that the specific immune-opsonins may play a very important part in the phenomena of immunity, as by their means the organisms are taken up more actively by the phagocytic cells, and thereafter may undergo rapid disintegration.
The increased ingestion of bacteria in active immunity would seem to depend upon the presence of immune opsonins in the serum.
Thus the apparent increased activity of the leucocytes is due to a preliminary effect of the opsonins on the bacteria.
This, as already pointed out, depends upon the increase of opsonins, though it is also to be noted that in many infective conditions there is another factor present, namely a leucocytosis, that is, an increase of the leucocytes in the blood, and the defensive powers of the body are thereby increased.
Wright and others, in recent work on opsonins, have shown that, by injecting dead cultures of the causal agent into subjects infected with the organism, there is produced in the body fluids a substance (opsonin) which apparently in favourable conditions unites with the living causal bacteria and so sensitizes them that they are readily taken up and destroyed by the phagocytic cells of tissues.