Gonorrhea in adolescents: complement-fixing antibodies in a selected population of young women

Over a four-year period a group of 209 young women committed to a state institution for deliquent youths was screened for infection with Neisseria gonorrhoeae by multiple bacteriologic cultures and by gonococcal complement-fixation tests. In this selected population of sexually active young women with a relatively high prevalence of gonorrhea, the gonoccal complement fixation test proved too insensitive to justify primary reliance on it for the identification of cases of actual disease. Only 25 (38%) of infected women had reactive sera. The specificity of the test was somewhat better; in two cases unexpected sero-positivity led to the identification, and treatment of previously-missed asymptomatic disease.