Aspectos inmunológicos de la parotiditis epidémica

Abstract

This study covered 497 recruits aged 20 who were drafted into a Cordoba city unit of the Argentine army for military training. Like other Cordoba units, this one is beset by epidemics of mumps almost every year and some of them are severe. Of the 497 individuals examined, 391 (78.7 percent) geve positive reactions to one or more laboratory tests including the cutaneous test and for that reason were considered to be an immune group; 99 (19.9 percent) gave a negative reaction and consequently belong to the non-immune group or probable susceptible persons; and the remaining 7 (1.4 percent) did not complete the test. Of the 391 persons in the immune group, 240 had a positive history. The total number of soldiers with a background of mumps was 274; in the case of 240 of them this was confirmed by laboratory tests (87.5 percent) which implies a high degree of correlation and shows that in this study a positive background was worthy of confidence. On the other hand, of the 223 individuals with a negative history, 150 (62 percent) were shown by laboratory tests to have had a previous attack of the disease. This percentage is of course too high to represent the real incidence of inapparent infection. It is more logical to suppose that the negative history in the group studied was not reliable in a great many cases. In the conditions under which the study was made, negative intradermal tests (IT)