THE FAILURE OF ANTIBODY FORMATION IN LEUKEMIA

Abstract

A few reported studies on the blood of leukemia patients show that antibodies either do not occur or are lessened in several of the infectious diseases and after inoculation with various organisms. Moreschi¹ observed that a patient with chronic lymphatic leukemia, who contracted typhoid fever, failed to develop agglutinin for B. typhosus. From a study of the literature on typhoid fever, he found that about 6.7 per cent. of typhoid fever patients normally failed to produce agglutinin. In order to determine whether the failure in antibody production in his patient was due to this normal percentage of failure or to the chronic leukemia, he started inoculating his leukemic patients against B. typhosus to observe the agglutinin response. In the course of two years he had inoculated two patients with lymphatic leukemia and six with myelogenous leukemia. A lymphatic leukemia patient who contracted typhoid fever and a lymphosarcoma patient with a