Selective immunodeficiency affecting staphylococcal response.

Eight patients with recurrent staphylococcal infections, necessitating up to 213 hospital admissions in one patient, gave normal results with the usual immunological investigations, including measurement of serum IgG and IgG2. In the staphylococcal inhibition test all showed persistently subnormal results, corrected by the addition of compatible normal plasma or normal IgG therapy for 6 months to 21 years, and one died from staphylococcal septicaemia 6 months after withdrawal of treatment. The impairment in anti-staphylococcal response, with failure to produce adequate antibodies, was probably acquired in utero in four patients and inherited in two. In these six patients symptoms started soon after 4 months. In the remaining two the syndrome was acquired later in life.