Abstract
THE difficulty of sterilizing syringes satisfactorily has been the subject of much recent research. A leading article in the Lancet (111, July 28, 1945) discusses this problem, the importance of which is emphasized by the publication, in the same issue (p. 106), by E. M. Darmady and C. Hardwick, of an account of hepatitis in ten subjects which followed the administration, by means of syringes, of pentothal and penicillin. These authors discuss the difficulties of proving the possibility of the transmission by syringes of the small amounts of blood containing an icterogenic principle which are required to produce hepatitis. The icterogenic principle involved is, these authors say, so heat-resistant that ordinary methods of sterilization of syringes do not destroy it. Prolonged heat is necessary for this. The use of needles alone for the withdrawal of blood for laboratory purposes would also prevent the contamination of whole syringes. The discussion of the same problem in a memorandum issued by medical officers of the Ministry of Health, recorded in the same issue of the Lancet (p. 116), comes to the conclusion that revision of existing injection techniques is required, and that hepatitis following the injection of arsphen-amine, gold and other substances is an expression of homologous serum jaundice communicated by traces of blood transferred from subject to subject on syringes and needles. It is, of course, easy to overestimate the dangers which may result from existing methods of sterilization of syringes. Millions of injections must be done every year without untoward results. But the evidence recorded here emphasizes the importance of the report of the committee appointed by the Medical Research Council (M.R.C. War Mem. No. 15, H.M. Stationery Office, 1945, 4d.) to consider the sterilization of syringes. This report should interest the experimental worker as well as the medical man, for, in certain kinds of experimental work, the results may be seriously affected by inadequate attention to the cleaning of syringes and needles.
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Sterilization of Syringes. Nature 156, 745 (1945). https://doi.org/10.1038/156745a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/156745a0