Effects of chemotherapy on humoral immune of tuberculosis patients and analysis of it’s clinical significance

Through the surveilance of humoral immune levels in 48 patients hospitalized with pulmonary tuberculosis under chemotherapy for 4-5 months, it was found that there are three different modes of humoral immune response among the patients after treatment. 66.6% of the patients showed a rising level of antimycobacterial antibodies in thire sera which reached the maxinum after 1-3 month treatment and then decreased slowly, 18.7% of the patients whose sera contained higher level of antimycobacterial antibodies at the beginning of treatment showed a slowly drop in the level of the antibodies after treatment; 14.6% of them whose sera contained low level of specific antibodies had no humoral immune response. The specific antibody levels in five patients during the surveilance period showed a periodic change. The results in the present paper showed that under the effect of chemotherapy the increased humoral immune response may play a protective role.