[The relation between serum-bacteriostatic activity and the blood groups of patients with lung tuberculosis (author's...

The bacterial activity of sera from 116 patients suffering from various forms of tuberculosis of the lung, pleuritis exsudativa, neoplasm of the lung and histologically verified sarcoidosis of the lung were tested against 12 different strains of mycobacteria. The results obtained were then related to the blood-group of the respective patients. As can be seen from the results, there was a statistically significant difference (p = 0.001) between the values of bacterial activity for patients with (1) positive and negative Tb excretion and (2) patients suffering from an indurative and destructive form of tuberculosis of the lung. In contrast, it was not possible to establish statistically significant differences in the level of bacterial activity in patients with different levels of the i.d. tuberculin reaction (3). In patients with positive Tb excretion (4) and patients with destructive tuberculosis of the lung (5) there were increased levels of bacterial activity for all blood-groups if compared with values for patients with negative Tb excretion or patients suffering from indurative forms of lung tuberculosis. A statistical analysis of all results did not confirm the authors' hypothesis that the elevated incidence of destructive forms of tuberculosis and of bacterial excretion among patients having blood-group "O" could be ascribed to an insufficiency of bacteriostatic activity in the sera of these patients.