What is serum sickness?

➢ Serum Sickness (SS) is the systemic forms of type III HS reactions. ➢ A disease which is now of pure historic interest but was a common occurrence in patients receiving repeated injections of anti-diphteric horse serum (or anti-Tetanos). This class of drugs provide so-called passive immunization. ➢ This illness was so named because it frequently followed the administration of this therapeutic horse antiserum. ➢ In the preantibiotic era, antiserum made by immunizing horses was often used to treat pneumococcal pneumonia; the specific anti-pneumococcal antibodies in the horse serum would help the patient to clear the infection