Blood, 1959, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 246-254.
© 1959 American Society of Hematology, Inc.
Behavior of Total Serum Complement in Hodgkin’s
Disease and Other Malignant Lymphomas
ANTONIO ROTTINO 1 and
ARTHUR L. LEVY 1
1 Hodgkin’s Disease Research Laboratory, St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York,
N. Y. The Hodgkin’s Disease Research Laboratory is supported in part by the Dorothy
H. & Lewis Rosenstiel Foundation, The Damon Runyon Fund for Cancer Research, and
The Nias Foundation.
Using the method of Mayer and collaborators for the determination of
complement in the blood serum, 67 normal persons, 72 patients with Hodgkin’s disease, 28 with other types of lymphoma and 65 with cancer involvement of various organs were studied.
Fifty-eight of 72 Hodgkin’s disease patients were found to have an elevated
level of complement, 12 a normal level and 2 a below-normal level. Elevated
levels were found also in patients with other lymphomas and cancer.
An association between elevated complement, increased sedimentation
level, decreased serum properdin, positive C-reactive protein and elevated
beta globulin in the serum was noted.
The conclusion reached is that an elevation of complement in the serum
indicates that Hodgkin’s disease is in an active phase. As to the nature of
the disease, the statistics assembled seem to give no clue.
Submitted on March 7, 1958
Accepted on July 22, 1958
