1959 Volume 28 Issue 1-2 Pages 6-12
In order to learn the immunological relationship between tuberculosis and leprosis, serum samples of 200 leprous patients who were proved clinically and bacteriologically to have no lesion of tuberculosis, were tested by the Middlebrook-Dubos' passive hemagglutination and the hemolytic test after Sindo-Meddlebrook's forumula using the tuberculin fraction Fr. II as the antigen.
In the passive hemagglutination, as a whole, positive rate was 80%, and tde mean value of end titres was 1: 33.2. The positive rates and their mean values in both cases of lepro-matous and tuberculoid leprosies were 85%, 67.7% and 1:39.7, 1:17.6 respectivery.
In the hemolytic test, on the whole, positive rate was 81.0% and it's mean value of end titres was 1:85.8. Further, the positive rate and mean value of end titres in the sases with lepromatous leprosy was 82.9% and 1: 93.0 respectively, and 76.1% and 1: 65.5 in cases with tuberculoid leprosy.
Thus, the positive rate and the mean value of end titres in both seroogic testsin cases with lepromatous leprosy were higher than those in cases with tuberculoid leprosy.
The averaged pattern of the two-dimensional hemolytic test was less steeper than those in tuberculosis.
In the present investigation of leprosy, no correlation between results of both the tube-rculin skin reaction and the hemolytic test was obsered. This fact is quite different from the picture in healthy adults in Japan.
Tee positive rate of hemolytic test of tuberculin test-negative ones was in some degree lower than that of tuberculin test-positive ones, while the mean value of hemolytic titre of the former was higher than that of the latter.
