The Relation of Cephalin Flocculation and Colloidal Gold Reactions to the Serum Proteins.

Precipitating agents of many varieties are employed to study the proteins of the blood in health and disease, giving rise to such reactions as the Takata-Ara, the Weltmann, the formol gel, and the albumin-globulin partitions by salting-out methods. More recently, the stability of certain colloidal suspensions in dilute serum has been used for a similar purpose. For example, it has been shown that emulsions of cephalin and cholesterol or colloidal gold sols are readily precipitated when mixed with the serum of patients suffering from hepatitis and allied disorders of the liver (1, 2). These substances may therefore be used in tests for the recognition and study of certain hepatic diseases. The present report deals with the reaction of cephalin-cholesterol emulsions and colloidal gold suspension with various fractions of normal and pathological sera as obtained by electrophoretic separation. Positive colloidal gold reactions have been attributed for many years to the serum globulins (3) and more recently the gamma globulin fraction of cerebrospinal fluid has been shown to give positive reactions (4). This work was undertaken to determine whether both positive cephalin-cholesterol and positive colloidal gold reactions which show clinical similarities depend upon related factors in the serum proteins.