Antibodies in human brucellosis.

Abstract

There have been a number of studies of the serological and immunological properties of brucella antibodies in man and animals. Vaerman et al. (1963) and Wilkinson (1966) have shown that all three major classes of immunoglobulin are involved at some time during the course of infection. The former workers showed that three purified immunoglobulins, known as IgG, IgA, and IgM, obtained from the serum of cases of brucellosis contained brucella agglutinating antibodies, and Wilkinson, using mainly cattle sera, found that when each of [hese immunoglobulins was removed by specific precipitating rabbit anti-human IgG, IgA, and IgM sera this resulted in rhe inhibition of their serological activity. Anderson et al. '1964) and Reddin et al. (1965) reported changes in serological activity during the course of the disease, and it seemed likely that analysis of a serum at different stages of the disease to determine in which fraction its serological activity lies might ?ive information of value in diagnosis, as has been indicated m a previous study (Kerr et al., 1966). The present report is an attempt to relate the serological response at various stages of acute brucellosis to the types of globulin present at these stages, and to compare these findings with those found in sera from a group of veterinary surgeons who, while no longer acutely infected, may have been suffering from the disease in its chronic form or may have had their mmune responses from a previous infection stimulated by repeated contact with the organism in the course of their work.