Correlation of Milk Precipitins with IgA Deficiency

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Undue susceptibility to infection is a feature of several diverse conditions in which precipitins to cow's milk are commonly found. To investigate the possible relation of the presence of milk precipitins to immunologic deficiency, we examined serum specimens of 138 patients with various immunologic defects. Highly significant (p less than 0.001) correlations were observed between a selective deficiency of serum IgA (when concentrations were 10 mg per 100 ml or less) and the presence of serum milk precipitins or milk tanned-cell hemagglutinating-antibody titers greater than 270. Precipitins were found in 18 of 24 IgA-deficient patients (75 per cent), in three of seven patients with Aldrich syndrome (43 per cent), but in only two of the remaining 107 immunologically deficient patients (1.9 per cent). It appears that such precipitating antibodies are more likely to develop when antibody production is impaired in the IgA class but intact in the other immunoglobulin classes.