Dissociated chemotactic responses to zymosan activated serum and bacterial chemotactic factor observed in a variety of diseases.

Chemotactic responses of patients with a variety of diseases to two different types of chemotactic factors were analyzed. Granulocytes were obtained from the patients with childhood malignant diseases during chemotherapy, the patients with measles, the adult patients with recurrent aphthous stomatitis, and newborn infants. 22 out of all the 38 patients (58%) showed decreased chemotactic response to zymosan activated human serum (ZAS), whereas only 9 patients (24%) showed decreased response to Escherichia coli-derived chemotactic factor (bacterial chemotactic factor: BCF). Furthermore, only 6 out of 22 patients who showed decreased chemotaxis to ZAS showed decreased chemotaxis to BCF. Analogous results were also obtained with cord blood granulocytes. These facts suggest that various kinds of chemotactic factors activate granulocytes in different ways, and that the evaluation of chemotactic response in a patient should be made simultaneously using more than two different types of chemotactic factor.