Tuberc Respir Dis.  1988 Mar;35(1):31-37. 10.4046/trd.1988.35.1.31.

Antimycobacterial Antibody to Phosphatide Antigen in Patients with Pulmonary Tuberculosis during Chemotherapy

• KMID: 2528623
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4046/trd.1988.35.1.31

Abstract

It is still in difficulty to assess precicely the response to chemotherapy and determine activity of tuberculosis especially in patients with longstanding tuberculosis with destroyed lung and extrapulmonary tuberculosis by chest X-ray examination and sputum examination. Many investigators tried to develop useful serologic test for this purpose. There are protein antigen, polysaccharide antigen and phosphatide antigen in tubercle bacilli , and the antibodies to each antigen are present independently in sera of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. Among them, the antibody to phosphatide antigen is known to be most specific. The anthors measured the antiphosphatide antibody titer monthly by kaolin agglutination test in the sera of 13 active tuberculosis patients during chemotherapy, and the following results were obtained. 1) 8 of 12 pulmonary tuberulosis patients showed four fold decrease of antibody titer with chemotherapy and it took 5.0 ± 2.4 months in average. 2) Comparing with prechemotherapy antibody titer, significant decrease of antibody titer showed after 4 month with chemotherapy(p < 0.05). And a patient who did not improve with chemotherapy showed no change of antibody titer. 3) The specificity and sensitivity of kaolin agglutination test were 0.90 and 0.89 respectively but the antibody titer showed no difference according to the extent of disease.