[Detection of metabolic inhibition antibody to Mycoplasma pneumoniae by new method with guinea-pig complement]

Improvement of the fermentation-inhibition (FI) test for Mycoplasma pneumoniae was attempted. The sensitivity of detecting the FI antibody to M. pneumoniae in the homologous immune rabbit serum was notably elevated, when such FI medium containing gamma globulin-free horse serum and guinea-pig complement in substitution for unheated horse serum was used. The M. pneumoniae suspension was filtered to remove aggregates of the organisms and used as the antigen for this new FI test. In detection of the serum antibody of patients with M. pneumoniae infections, the new FI test showed much higher sensitivity than conventional FI test and strongly correlated (r = 0.84) with high density particle agglutination test known to detect both IgG and IgM antibodies.