All issues > Volume 33(12); 1990

Original Article

J Korean Pediatr Soc. 1990;33(12):1647-1655. Published online December 31, 1990.

Changes of PPD-Specific Immunoglobulin in Pulmonary Tuberculosis After Treatment.

Ja Young Kim¹, Mun Hwan Lee¹, Pyoung Han Hwang¹, Chan Uhng Joo¹, Jung Soo Kim¹

¹Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, Chonbuk National University, Chonju, Korea

Received: June 18, 1990;  Accepted: September 18, 1990.

Abstract

The definite diagnosis and precise assessment of response to therapy is still a problem in childhood tuberculosis because these patients rarely produce sputum and if obtained it may be negative. For this reason, diagnosis rely largely on the clinical and X-ray examination, which have a low specificity and high proportion of false positive results. Recently immunologic diagnosis of tuberculosis using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was emerged as a new diagnostic method This study was performed to evalvate the diagnostic and prognostic efficacy of PPD-specific immunoglobulins on pulmonary tuberculosis. PPD-specific IgG, IgA and IgM were measured using ELISA on the sera from 40 pulmonary tuberculosis patients and 19 healthy controls. The following results were obtained. 1) The values of PPD- specific IgG were significantly higher in pulmonary tuberculosis patients than those in controls and correlated to the extent of the tuberculosis (P<0.01). The values of PPD-specific IgA and IgM were higher only in far advanced pulmoary tuberculosis patients than those in controls, but there no differences depending on the extent of tuberculosis. 2) The values of PPD-specific IgG were significantly decreased after 2~4 months of treatment in all groups of pulmonary tuberculosis patients except far advanced pulmonary tuberculosis (P<0.01). But there were no significant alterations of the values of PPD-specific IgA and IgM after treatment. 3) Among the moderate and far advanced pulmonary tuberculosis patients, the values of PPD- specific IgG were significantly decreased in responders after 6 months of treatment, however PPD- specific IgG in non-responder were rather increased (p<0.01). The results indicate that detection of PPD-specific IgG using ELISA can be used for rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis as well as evaluating the response of chemotherapy and prognosis.

Keywords :PPD-specific immunoglobulins, Pulmonary tuberculosis