Phagocytosis by Human Leucocytes. II. Relation of Nutritional Deficiency in Man to Phagocytosis1

It is generally believed that malnourished patients are more prone to bacterial infection than normal healthy individuals. Increased susceptibility to infection has been attributed to an impaired capacity to produce specific antibodies against the infectious agent (1) or possibly to decreased phagocytic activity resulting from nutritional deficiency (2). Quantitative data have already been presented (3) showing that emaciated patients produce antibody as well as or better than healthy control subjects so that such proneness to develop infection is probably not often related to lack of antibody production. In the present communication studies are reported on the second possibility, namely, that decreased phagocytosis in malnourished patients predisposes them to infection.