Abstract
Summary
It has been found that human blood, washed red cells, plasma, and serum contain all of the factors necessary for growing the H37Rv strain of M. tuberculosis from small inocula. The active component in red blood cells has been tentatively identified as hemoglobin. The essential ingredients in plasma or serum are more complex and require further study. A mixture of human fractions I and V was shown to be capable of initiating growth from large inocula but the data were not comparable with those obtained using whole serum. Similar results were obtained with bovine proantithrombin, fibrinolysin, and prothrombin.
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