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Cardiolipin AntigenIII. An Examination of Specificity

1953; BMJ; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1136/sti.29.2.84

1472-3263

H Schmidt,

Monoclonal and Polyclonal Antibodies Research

Most authors agree that the sensitivity of cardio- lipin antigen is equal to that of the unpurified antigens, while the specificity of cardiolipin antigen is appreciably higher than that of unpurified antigens (Rein and Kent, 1947; Vogelsang, 1948; Schmidt, 1951; Reyn and Schmidt, 1951; Schmidt and Reyn, 1952).Price and Wilkinson (1952), however, reported that with cardiolipin antigen they found more non-specific positive reactions in routine tests than with unpurified antigen.Various explanations may be offered of non- specific positive reactions, but there are three main causes:(i) technical errors, (ii) syphiloid reactions, (iii) " genuine " biologically false positive re- actions.(i) Technical Errors.-These may be due to admixture to the blood sample of various chemicals such as citrate, alcohol, ether, iodine tincture, arsphenamine, tannic acid from cork stoppers, etc. (Meinicke, 1952).Maladjustment of antigen, complement, etc. must also be considered as technical errors.(ii) "Syphiloid Reactions ".-This name has been applied to the positive reactions occurring in connexion with certain spirochaetal diseases (such as yaws, pinta, and bejel) by several authors, who wished to indicate that the positive reactions occurring in such diseases are not really non-specific, because the causal spirochaetae are likely to have certain antigenic properties in common with Spirochaetapallida, thus causing cross-reactions with the syphilitic antigens.Turner (1952) demonstrated that 4 months after injection with Nichols' pathogenic spirochaetae, rabbits were immune to challenge infections with other strains of spirochaetae recently isolated from venereal syphilis, and, in some degree, also to infection with bejel and yaws.(iii)" Genuine" Biologically False Positive Sero- Reactions.-Theseoccur in many different conditions.They may be connected with an acute disease and then disappear gradually after recovery; in such cases they may be described as acute.In other cases the positive reaction may persist for years or for life, and may then be described as chronic.