CH50 and C3 component of complement in Hansen's disease.

Although a variety of complement values have been reported in leprosy, we found no difference in the CH50 and C3 in the sera of 30 normal persons and 233 lepromatous patients. No statistically significant difference was observed in CH50 and C3 values between healthy controls and lepromatous patients taken as a whole or separated into the different types of the disease spectrum (P greater than 0.1). A statistical difference in C3 titers was found between health controls and borderline patients (P less than 0.05 greater than 0.01) but the sample number is too small to be valid. An important number of sera tested had low and an equally important number had high complement values. Sera with high and low values are important because high values are found in acute inflammatory reactions and low values demonstrate complement activation. Discrepancies in reported results are probably due not only to differences in the methods used, storage and limited number of sera tested, but mainly to the stage of the disease and the drug's administration.