The Presence of Anti-gamma Globulin Factors in Sera of Patients with Active Pulmonary Tuberculosis

THE USE of particulate carrier aggluti-nation methods has made possible the serological detection of serum macroglobu-lins which interact with human or animal gamma globulin (1). These macroglobu-lins, present with great frequency in the sera of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, have been called "rheumatoid factors " (2-4). Similar macroglobulins are also present in many other disease states, including sys-temic lupus erythematosus, sarcoidosis, syphilis, and cirrhosis of the liver (5-9). Positive "rheumatoid factor " agglutina-tion tests have also been obtained with sera from some patients with chronic pul-monary tuberculosis (9-11). It was the pur-pose of this study to determine whether such positive "rheumatoid factor " agglut-ination findings in pulmonary tuberculosis could be correlated with the presence of macroglobulins in patients ' sera and with the extent or severity of the disease process. For this purpose a group of 250 patients with chronic active pulmonary tuberculosis were studied. Each of the natients had X-ray findings of pulmonary tuberculosis, as well as positive tuberculin tests and posi-tive sputum tests for Mycobacterium tu-berculosis. Sera from those patients which yielded positive latex fixation tests (12) were then studied by various chemical and immunological methods to demonstrate the presence of macroglobulins reactive with human gamma globulin.