[Alterations in serum proteins following thermal injuries]

Serum suppressive factors were proved to be present and considered to be one of the causes to bring about the suppression of body defence following thermal injury. As a preliminary step to ascertain the presence of immunosuppressive substances, we tried to find out any abnormality in the postburn serum proteins by comparison of burned and normal sera by means of immuno-precipitation-in-gel. Results of SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, crossed immunoelectrophoresis, tandem crossed immunoelectrophoresis, and fused rocket immunoelectrophoresis showed that differences of precipitation bands or peaks existed between burned and normal sera, and abnormal constituents with relatively low molecular weight were present in the burned serum.