Occurrence of liver-specific antigen in adult human serum.

A liver-specific, water-soluble autoantigen (F-antigen) was detected by double diffu-ion using specifically prepared antiserum in thirty of 285 adult serum samples tested. F-antigen was found most frequently in disorders associated with hepatocellular destruction such as metastatic cancers (four of eleven patients) and viral hepatitis (eight of twenty-five). It was also found in serum from patients with cirrhosis (three of twenty-eight), steatonecrosis (two of thirteen) and hepatocellular carcinoma (two of eleven). These preliminary results suggest that further study of F-antigen in human disease states is warranted.