[Rheumatoid blood factors in patients with complicated spinal injury]

Enzyme immunoassay (ELISA) was used to study the levels of serum rheumatoid factors (RF) of classes IgM and IgG in patients with spinal injuries and osteochondrosis. The findings show that at the late stages of the disease, the patients with spinal injury show 46% seropositiveness for IgG-RF and 40% for IgM-RF. Patients with fresh central nervous system (CNS) injuries were 12 and 14% seropositive, respectively. Patients with osteochondrosis exhibited 33% seropositiveness for IgG-RF. Determination of serum RF enables the authors to identify systemic body lesions at the late stages of spinal injuries as rheumatic disease. These data support the conclusion that RF determination is a reliable serological indicator of the severity of a patient's traumatic disease.