Skip to main content
PMC home page
British Medical Journal logoLink to British Medical Journal
. 1977 Aug 13;2(6084):430–433. doi: 10.1136/bmj.2.6084.430

Antibodies against BCG antigen 60 in mycobacterial infection.

M Harboe, O Closs, B Bjorvatn, G Bjune
PMCID: PMC1631241  PMID: 407965

Abstract

A sensitive specific radioimmunoassay was developed to measure antibodies against BCG antigen 60, a prominent antigenic component of BCG bacilli which cross-reacts with similar components in many mycobacterial species including Mycobacterium leprae and M tuberculosis. A lepromatous serum pool had anti-BCG-60 activity with a titre of 10(5) and the tuberculoid pool a titre of 10(4). Testing of individual sera showed striking variations within groups of patients with lepromatous and tuberculoid leprosy. In five of the 20 tuberculoid leprosy sera the anti-BCG-60 activity was above the median for the lepromatous group. The current view that antibody formation against mycobacterial antigens is very low in tuberculoid leprosy thus no longer appears to be tenable. Sera from eight patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis also showed a striking variation in anti-BCG-60 content, and the median value of this group was even higher than in those with lepromatous leprosy.

Full text

PDF
430

Images in this article

431FIG 1
on p.431

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Axelsen N. H., Harboe M., Closs O., Godal T. BCG antibody profiles in tuberculoid and lepromatous leprosy. Infect Immun. 1974 May;9(5):952–958. doi: 10.1128/iai.9.5.952-958.1974. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Harboe M., Closs O., Deverill J. Production of monospecific antisera against antigenic componentsof Mycobacterium bovis (BCG). Scand J Immunol. 1976;5(6-7):861–866. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3083.1976.tb03035.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Harboe M., Closs O., Svindahl K., Deverill J. Production and assay of antibodies against one antigenic component of Mycobacterium bovis BCG. Infect Immun. 1977 May;16(2):662–672. doi: 10.1128/iai.16.2.662-672.1977. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Harboe M., Fölling I. Recognition of two distinct groups of human IgM and IgA based on different binding to staphylococci. Scand J Immunol. 1974;3(4):471–482. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3083.1974.tb01280.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Janicki B. W., Wright G. L., Jr, Good R. C., Chaparas S. D. Comparison of antigens in sonic and pressure cell extracts of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Infect Immun. 1976 Feb;13(2):425–437. doi: 10.1128/iai.13.2.425-437.1976. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Jonsson S., Kronvall G. The use of protein A-containing Staphylococcus aureus as a solid phase anti-IgG reagent in radioimmunoassays as exemplified in the quantitation of alpha-fetoprotein in normal human adult serum. Eur J Immunol. 1974 Jan;4(1):29–33. doi: 10.1002/eji.1830040108. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Myrvang B., Feek C. M., Godal T. Antimycobacterial antibodies in sera from patients throughout the clinico-pathological disease spectrum of leprosy. Acta Pathol Microbiol Scand B Microbiol Immunol. 1974 Oct;82B(5):701–706. doi: 10.1111/j.1699-0463.1974.tb00238.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Myrvang B., Godal T., Ridley D. S., Fröland S. S., Song Y. K. Immune responsiveness to Mycobacterium leprae and other mycobacterial antigens throughout the clinical and histopathological spectrum of leprosy. Clin Exp Immunol. 1973 Aug;14(4):541–553. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Myrvang B. Immune responses to mycobacterium leprae in man. J Oslo City Hosp. 1975 Jan;25(1):3–24. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Ridley D. S., Waters M. F. Significance of variations within the lepromatous group. Lepr Rev. 1969 Jul;40(3):143–152. doi: 10.5935/0305-7518.19690026. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Sudarsanam A., Grabosz J., Myklestad B., Myrvang B., Harboe M. Experimental Arthus reactions using the same antigen in soluble and corpuscular form. Afr J Med Sci. 1971 Oct;2(4):319–328. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. Turk J. L., Bryceson A. D. Immunological phenomena in leprosy and related diseases. Adv Immunol. 1971;13:209–266. doi: 10.1016/s0065-2776(08)60185-6. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Turk J. L., Waters M. F. Immunological significance of changes in lymph nodes across the leprosy spectrum. Clin Exp Immunol. 1971 Mar;8(3):363–376. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. Wemambu S. N., Turk J. L., Waters M. F., Rees R. J. Erythema nodosum leprosum: a clinical manifestation of the arthus phenomenon. Lancet. 1969 Nov 1;2(7627):933–935. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(69)90592-3. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from British Medical Journal are provided here courtesy of BMJ Publishing Group

RESOURCES