Globulin v. Jaundice

Infectious hepatitis, by vulgar error called jaundice,* is the kind of disease that in peacetime worries doctors very little. It makes people uncomfortable but rarely kills them. But hepatitis worries doctors in wartime because 1) it puts its victims out of action for two or three months; 2) so many British and U.S. troops have had it, especially in the Mediterranean area, that the number is a military secret.

Last week, to the few facts known about hepatitis' cause & cure, Dr. Joseph Stokes Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia's Children's Hospital and Army Captain John R. Neefe added an important discovery. In the Journal of the American Medical Association they reported that blood serum globulin (already used as a measles preventive) can probably stop an infectious hepatitis epidemic.

Globulin is extracted from the pooled blood serum of many donors, thus contains disease-fighting elements contributed by all of them. The protection it gives is only temporary, but usually lasts until an epidemic is over. The doctors got the chance to try globulin last summer at a large summer camp where infectious hepatitis was spoiling the vacations of 80% of the campers. Of 331 as yet unjaundiced campers, 53 got globulin injections. Soon 67% of the untreated campers got sick, while 80.2% of the globulin-shot kept well. And those who succumbed were not as sick as the untreated ones. "The results," say the researchers, "are encouraging."

* Jaundice is not a disease but a symptom which may caused by a number of infections and diseases, including hepatitis.

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