An Immunologic Survey of Forty-Eight Patients with Myasthenia Gravis

Abstract

FOR many years it has been recognized that myasthenia gravis is associated, in a high percentage of cases, with structural abnormalities of the thymus.¹ Many patients, especially the younger ones, have shown marked clinical improvement after thymectomy or thymic irradiation or both.^{2 3 4} Yet the exact role of the thymus in myasthenia gravis is not known. Because thymectomy in the young animal is followed by lymphocytopenia, together with some impairment of humoral-antibody production and expression of the reaction of delayed (cellular) hypersensitivit-,^{5 6 7 8 9} we wondered whether similar changes occurred in thymectomized patients with myasthenia gravis. In addition, recent studies of myasthenic patients . . .