[Osteoarticular infections. Role of immune deficiences. Value of sero-immunology in the diagnosis].

Although bone and joint infections do not seem to be more frequent in patients with immune deficiences than in normal subjects, it seems paradoxically that an immune deficiency is relatively frequent during fully diagnosed bone and joint infections: the discrepancy between the two types of data is not easy to explain. Serology and immunology laboratories give little information in the etiological diagnosis of bone and joint infections, with the exception of perhaps gonococcal infections (search for anti-gonococcal antibodies by immunofluorescence), staphylococcal infections (pasteurella, yersinia, tularemia and brucella infections). In most cases, although the abnormalities observed are due to infection of the organism by the germ, they have nothing characteristic of the bone and joint localisation itself.