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Quantitative Studies on the Group-Specific Substances in Human Blood and Saliva

II. Group-Specific Substance A, with Special Reference to the Subgroups¹

From the Bacteriological and Serological Laboratory of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City

Abstract

With the quantitative technic described in a previous paper comparative studies were carried out on the group-specific substance A in human blood and saliva using human group-B serum and anti-A immune-rabbit serum. From the reactions of the blood of A₁ and A₂ individuals, the presence in the human serum of two isoagglutinins, and ₁, was readily confirmed; on the other hand, the behavior of the anti-A immune serum indicates that it contains but one sort of alpha antibody, which reacts more intensely with A₁ than with A₂ blood. In contrast to the reactions of the blood, only slight differences were detected between the group substances in the salivas of individuals of the two subgroups, A₁ and A₂. In fact, in one test it was not even possible to distinguish the saliva of an A₃ individual, by its reactions, from A₁ and A₂ salivas. While definite differences were found in the reactivities of salivas from two A₂B individuals as compared with salivas of group A, these were much smaller than the differences between the corresponding bloods. These observations indicate that the A substances in saliva and blood are different. Further evidence of the difference between the group-substance A in saliva and blood was furnished by comparing the reactions with human-B serum and anti-A immune-rabbit serum, the former giving higher titers with saliva than with blood, the latter acting more intensely with blood than with saliva, at least in the case of subgroup A₁. As had been previously found for the saliva of group-B individuals, so also for group-A individuals there was not much variation in the concentration of the group-substance in saliva not only in the same individual at different times, but also among different individuals.

Some practical applications in forensic medicine of the examination of secretions for their content of group-specific substances are briefly discussed.

Footnotes

¹ Aided by a grant from the Committee on Human Heredity of the National Research Council.