Prevention of Endemic HAA-Positive Hepatitis with Gamma Globulin

Abstract

Abstract A simple radioimmune assay method was used to detect Australia (HAA) antigen in serum specimens from normal military blood donors and soldiers with endemic icteric hepatitis. This method detected more than twice the number of HAA-positive specimens among both groups of subjects than by other available methods. Furthermore, it detected all positive specimens found by the agar-gel diffusion, immunoelectro-osmophoresis, complement-fixation and passive hemagglutination-inhibition methods. The radioimmune assay method showed that about 1 per cent of screened military blood donors and 25 per cent of soldiers with icteric endemic hepatitis had HAA in their serum. In these patients with hepatitis we had previously shown that the prophylactic administration of human serum gamma globulin decreased the incidence of both HAA-positive and HAA-negative endemic icteric hepatitis. The availability of a new and more sensitive assay for HAA provided more convincing evidence that injection of gamma globulin with a ...