A Non-Specific Resistance Factor in the Albumin Residue Revealed By the Serial Cephalin Flocculation Curve

Abstract

IN the last laboratory meeting of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine, I demonstrated the various types of serial cephalin flocculation curves as obtained in health and disease with a special reference to their application in tropical derangements. In obtaining the curves, the serial dilution method was followed¹, using ten tubes instead of Hanger's original one-tube method². Serial cephalin flocculation curve I, shown in the accompanying figure, represents the normal range in fifty healthy volunteers. In a study of the mechanism of Hanger's test, which is comparable to the first tube in the serial dilution method, Kabat, Hanger et al.³ found the flocculating factor to be associated with the γ globulin. They failed, however, to find an inhibiting fraction in the albumins. Moore, Pierson et al.⁴ two years later, reported from the same laboratory the presence of an inhibiting fraction associated with the albumins. It is to be noted that these workers were using electrophoresis by means of which albumins appear homogeneous⁵. Dennis and Makari⁶, using salting-out methods, found the greatest concentrations of this inhibiting factor in the albumin residue. Since this inhibiting factor was found by the latter workers to be originally present in the serum in smaller amounts than the flocculating factor, the critical dilution-level of 0-04 mgm. is reached much earlier in the case of the inhibiting factor. The first zone representing the first five tubes in the figure presents, therefore, a delicate balance between flocculating factor (γ globulin) and inhibiting factor (albumin residue). In the second zone only the former is at work. This delicgite balance in this first zone represents as well a balance between the liver and reticulo-endothelial system.