A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF HUMAN SERUM AND SALIVARY ANTIBODY TITERS IN CASES OF BRUCELLA MELITENSIS INFECTIONS

¹ U. S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 3, Cairo, Egypt

Two hundred and nineteen saliva and sera samples, collected from 73 patients with Brucella melitensis infections, were examined by the complement-fixation and tube agglutination technic to form a comparative study of antibody titers.

Eighty per cent of the salivas were positive for brucella antibody when the sera contained a titer of 1:80 or over. Salivas from control individuals were consistently negative.

Concentration of the negative salivas from clinical patients with a serum titer of 1:80 or over showed the antibody to be consistently present, when tested by the tube agglutination method. Concentration of the saliva of control individuals gave negative results. It was not possible to use the complement-fixation test on concentrated salivas because of the concentration of anti-complementary factors in the saliva.

A statistical association in the amount of antibody in the sera and saliva from each patient was shown by correlation analyses. In the complement-fixation tests the correlation coefficient obtained was .674 and in the agglutination tests the correlation coefficient was .524.

Tables are presented showing the distribution of the comparative titers by the complement-fixation and agglutination tests.