Serum Mucoprotein Level in Differentiation of Hepatogenic From Obstructive Jaundice

DIFFERENTIATION of hepatogenic from obstructive jaundice continues to be a common diagnostic problem, despite the ever-expanding "battery" of liver function tests now available to the clinician. Such frequently employed tests as cephalin flocculation, thymol turbidity, zinc sulfate flocculation, and alkaline phosphatase activity depend upon relative or absolute changes in serum albumin, beta globulin, or gamma globulin or upon impairment of biliary excretion. Although increase of certain serum carbohydrate components related to the alpha-globulin fractions has long been recognized to occur in the presence of inflammatory and neoplastic disease,¹no attempt has been made until recently to employ measurement of these components in diagnosis of hepatic or biliary tract disease. In an extension of biochemical studies on the effect of chemotherapeutic agents in patients with advanced neoplastic disease, one of us (E. M. G.) and his colleagues²reported that the level of serum mucoprotein, an alpha-globulin constituent, appeared to