[Classification of 29 Hodgkin's disease patients as a function of the concentration of 22 serum antigens]

A method of numerical classification has been applied to the study of the concentrations of 22 serum antigens in 29 patients with Hodgkin's disease. This group of patients can be split into at least two subgroups. The two subgroups greatly differ by the severity of the clinical symptoms of the disease. One of them is very similar, for the antigen distribution, to a group of presumably normal young subjects. In the other group, there is a definite decrease of the concentration of transferrin, albumin, alpha1 lipoprotein and a definite increase of the concentration of antitrypsin, orosomucoid, ceruloplasmin and hemopexin. This separation into two subgroups is stable when other patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia are mixed to the patients with Hodgkin's disease.