An immunodiffusion technique in agarose is described for assay of complementfixing antibodies against the type-specific soluble antigen of influenza virus. Under the test conditions, positive human serum produced a definite unlysed zone around the well, and the annulus area showed a high correlation with the antibody level in a conventional complement fixation test with log2 serum titer. This p...

Although the literature on this subject is already quite considerable there is still some doubt as to the exact value of the different laboratory procedures available for the diagnosis of lymphogranuloma venereum. This does not, of course, apply to the demonstration of lymphogranuloma venereum virus in material from a suspected case of this disease, for this, as in any infective process, is of ...

In the vast majority of cases examined in this laboratory the result of the Wassermann test was simply confirmatory of the clinical findings, but there were numerous suspicious cases, or cases in which symptoms were present and the patient denied a specific history, in which the test was of the greatest value, and it is in such instances, perhaps, that it may be regarded as "the court of last r...

An outbreak of African horse sickness involving two horse stables in Lagos, Nigeria, was investigated. Inoculation of blood from infected horses into suckling albino mice resulted in isolation of a virus which was identified as African horse sickness virus by the complement fixation test. The clinical, pathological and epizootiological findings (reported elsewhere) were consistent with African ...

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) extracted with phenol-water from four oral strains of Bacteroides melaninogenicus was found to be serologically active in precipitation and complement fixation tests and sensitized sheep erythrocytes to agglutination. Except for the capacity to inhibit indirect hemagglutination, the serological activity was destroyed by oxidation with periodate. The isolated LPS was ant...

In a previous communication (Shaw, 1955), I referred to several papers concerning the value of cardiolipin antigen in complement-fixation and flocculation tests. The majority of workers have reported increased sensitivity and specificity with this antigen, which has also been recommended to obtain reproducible results in various laboratories in different countries. At that time, I compared the ...

Sheep and guinea pigs were immunized with cellular and extracellular antigen from Legionella pneumophila bacteria. After immunization, the animals developed immunoglobulin G titers against the immunizing agent. The same sera were also tested in a Mycoplasma pneumoniae complement fixation test. All the preimmunization sera from sheep showed positive M. pneumoniae complement fixation tests of var...

Brucellosis in Argentina is currently investigated in bank donor blood by the standard plate agglutination test (PAT). This study evaluated the buffered plate antigen test (BPA), now used to screen for bovine brucellosis, as a screen for human disease. Of 57 sera from patients with culture-confirmed brucellosis, 100% were detected with the BPA. Of 142 sera positive by rose bengal (RB) and compl...

A capillary agglutination (CA), a complement fixation (CF), a plate agglutination (PT) and an indirect fluorescent antibody (IFA) test to detect humoral antibodies to Anaplasma marginale are described. Serums from 3, 4 or 5 groups of cattle were used to examine the efficiency of the tests. Agreement between all 4 tests was 86.6%. Agreement between pairs of tests was greater. The CF test was the...

A cohort of 47 renal transplant recipients was studied prospectively for up to one year after transplantation. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) was isolated from 21 of the patients. The first time the virus was isolated seven patients were IgM positive, nine showed a significant rise in IgG titres, and 12 had a four-fold or greater rise in complement fixation titre. There was no significant difference in ...