Methodological aspects of a serodiagnostic Clostridium tumour test--experience with spontaneous canine tumours.

The paper describes the development of appropriate antigen and method combinations for the microbiological cancer test using the non-oncolysing strain Clostridium butyricum CNRZ 528 in dogs with spontaneous tumours. The diagnostic rod antibodies could be determined quantitatively by the complement fixation test if a short-time warm fixation and a long-time cold fixation procedure were combined in separate runs and if two different antigens, a rod corpuscular antigen and a rod surface antigen, were used. Since complement-fixing antibodies were not always detected in cases of malignant tumours, we additionally used the passive haemagglutination method after pre-absorbing the sera with cross-reacting clostridial antigens. The efficiency of the microbiological cancer test could not be substantially increased, however, by the method combination the reliability of the evaluation of low seropositive titres was improved.