HOMOLOGOUS SERUM HEPATITIS FOLLOWING TRANSFUSION

Abstract

JAUNDICE was an important medical problem in the European Theater of Operations after the American troops arrived in Northern Ireland and England in the early months of 1942. Until the late summer and fall of 1944 this jaundice was considered to be for the most part due to either infectious hepatitis or homologous serum hepatitis following the injection of yellow fever vaccine. In contrast, in many cases the jaundice seen following the invasion of Normandy, though belonging to the homologous serum group, differed in that the disease was transmitted by plasma, serum or whole blood instead of vaccine containing a human serum component. With the ever increasing use of transfusions of blood and plasma, it seems pertinent to emphasize the occurrence and importance of homologous serum hepatitis following this therapeutic procedure. It is the purpose of this paper to review briefly some of the literature and to report a series