Antibody response to booster dose of diphtheria and tetanus toxoids: Reactions in institutionalized adults and non-institutionalized children and young adults.

FROM 1943 to 1950, large groups of institutionalized mentally ill or retarded patients and noninstitutionalized young adults and children were inoculated with different combinations of diphtheria and tetanus toxoids, pertussis and typhoid vaccines, and scarlet fever toxin. Studies, reported by Volk and associates (14), were made to determine the antibody responses and the reactions elicited by different dosages and combinations of these antigens. When a reinoculation study of certain of these groups was initiated in 1956, the first problem to be resolved was the efficacy of booster doses consistent with freedom from reactions. This report deals with the studies which led to the selection of a 0.2-ml. booster dose, and therefore is a report of the reactions elicited by different doses of DT, diphtheria and tetanus toxoids, aluminum phosphate adsorbed, and DTP, diphtheria and tetanus toxoids, aluminum phosphate adsorbed, combined with pertussis vaccine.