Abstract
A low blood serum complement is often found in patients suffering of widespread disease of the bones(l). Because of this observation it was thought of interest to investigate the complement activity of the serous fluids expressed from the coagulate obtained from sternal bone marrow. Throughout this study the sternal puncture technic of v. d. Merwe(2) was employed. After the induction of local anesthesia with 2% novocain, the corpus sterni was punctured at the level of the second intercostal space. As a rule, the first drops obtained were smeared on slides for direct microscopic examination. After this, from 0.5 to 1 cc of the sternal marrow was withdrawn, ejected into a small serological test tube, and allowed to coagulate. After clotting the material was centrifugalized at 3000 r.p.m. for a period of 10 minutes and the supernate removed. For complement assay the hematocrit method of Jordan was used. One tenth of one cc of the fluid was employed and the titer obtained was compared with that of the blood serum which was tested at the same time.
It was found that in most oases the complement activity of the sternal fluid compared favorably with that of the blood serum. However, a small number of marrow fluids showed no complement activity at all while their corresponding sera possessed normal complement activity. It seems unlikely that these fluids should lack complement because a certain amount of blood is always obtained during puncture. It was found that the addition of complement components from normal serum failed to reactivate these marrow fluids. When these fluids were however mixed with active normal sera, they inhibited the complement activity of the latter. It was not feasible to work with larger quantities of sternal marrow since too great an admixture of blood would occur.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.