During the past 20 years considerable progress has been made on the biology,
biochemistry, toxicology, and immunology of tetanus toxin. These
recent developments are the main subject of this review. Epidemiological,
preventive, and therapeutic aspects have been deliberately omitted. Many
earlier observations, some of them seemingly contradictory, can now be
explained. They will not be repeated, but the reader is referred to earlier
reviews, e.g., by Fildes et al. (1929), Prevot (1955), Wright GP (1955),
Turpin and Raynaud (1959) and Laurence and Webster (1963). Of more
recent reviews, two by Zacks and Shelf ( 1970, 1971) are interesting for
their provocative theories, and one by Curtis (1971) dealing with electrophysiological
aspects. Further surveys dealing with various aspects of
tetanus toxin have been given by van Heyningen and Mellanby (1971),
Bizzini (1976, 1979), Habermann (1978), Mellanby and Green (1981).
The extensive work of Soviet scientists on tetanus has been published in a
monograph by Kryzhanovsky (1966), these studies have also been summarized
in English (Kryzhanovsky 1967, 1973, 1975a, b). In the reviews of
Lamanna and Carr (1967) and of Dasgupta and Sugiyama (1977) tetanus
toxin is compared with botulinum toxin.