1 The Department of Pediatrics, Tulane University School of Medicine, and the Charity Hospital of Louisiana at New Orleans.
The Middlebrook-Dubos hemagglutination test, measuring a humoral antibody against a polysaccharide fraction of the tubercle bacillus, has been studied in 343 sera from 287 infants and children. The test appears to be practical and may be useful as an index to activity of tuberculous disease.
A transient rise in level of antibodies was observed in some sera after either negative or positive skin tests with old tuberculin; this occasional provocative effect is largely dissipated within a month or two. Little or no antibody may be demonstrated in most sera from patients with either far advanced or healing tuberculosis. An age factor makes "unexpectedly" negative serologic results in most infants and younger children apparently quite meaningless.
Submitted on April 30, 1951