[Serum-antibodies in patients with extra-intestinal amoebiasis (amoebic liver abscess) and healthy persons (author's transl)].

Tests for serum antibodies against two amoeba antigens were performed on serum samples from 70 patients with amoebic liver abscesses, 204 travellers returning from tropical countries and 136 inhabitants of an endemic region without evidence of amoebiasis. Suspicious or borderline results in the complement-fixation, indirect haemagglutination, latex-agglutination, and double-gel diffusion tests occurred in 73.3%-90.4% of patients with amoebic liver abscess, in the same reactions (except double-gel diffusion test) in 12.1-18.9% of travellers in the trophics, and 16.2%-46.3% of inhabitants of endemic regions. There was evidence for the need of performing several tests: patients with amoebic liver abscesses gave diagnostically useful results the more frequently the more tests were performed on a given serum sample. Negative results in the three tests occurred in only one case of multiple liver abscesses, but the sample had been obtained very early.