Large Number Of Healthy Individuals Research Articles

Plasma antihaemophilic-factor concentrations in the Australian aborigine and in conditions associated with hyperglobulinaemia.

WHILE studying the plasma antihaemophilic-factor concentrations of a large number of healthy individuals, it was noted that Australian aborigines in general have higher plasma concentrations of this factor than the white Australian population. The factor was estimated by a technique1 based on the thromboplastin generation test and results were expressed as a percentage of the concentration in a standard normal plasma. The lower histogram in Fig. 1 shows the plasma concentrations in 86 healthy white adults adjusted to the nearest 10 per cent. The values are skewed with a fairly sharply defined lower limit and range from 60 to 200 per cent of standard normal. This group comprised equal numbers of males and females, and there was no significant sex difference in the values. These normal results are very similar to those found in a previous group of 80 normal white adults reported on from this laboratory2.

A Contribution to the Prophylaxis of Lobar Pneumonia

While the earliest investigations in the bacteriology of pneumonia have shown the presence of pneumococci in the mouth secretions of healthy persons as well as those suffering with lobar pneumonia, recent investigations show that the disease is frequently acquired by transmission of specific virulent types of pneumococci from a recovered person who still harbors in the mouth-secretions the organisms responsible for the disease, or from a healthy carrier of pathogenic pneumococci. Dochez and Avery1 found about 40% of. healthy persons intimately associated with cases of lobar pneumonia harboring the same types of pneumococci as those producing the disease; these carriers included physicians, nurses, and members of the patients' families as wives, mothers, brothers and sisters. Convalescents from pneumonia were found to carry the type of pneumococcus with which they have been infected, for a considerable length of time in one instance as long as 90 days, counting from the first day of illness. Stillman2 found pneumococci in the mouths of 172 normal persons of 398 studied; in 8 of these persons Types I and II pneumococci were present, while 26 persons harbored typical Type II organisms and 44 Type III. Of 84 persons studied who had been in contact with cases of pneumonia, 5, or 5.95%, showed either pneumococci of Type I or Type II in their sputum; the shortest period of carrying was 7 days, the longest 85 days. Sydenstricker and Suttons found from 6-22% of healthy persons harboring pneumococci of the fixed types in the sputum and about 32% harboring the ordinary saprophytic Type IV organisms. In a more recent summary of studies of a large number of healthy individuals in contact with cases of lobar pneumonia due to Type I and