Prevalence and titre of alpha and beta haemolysins in blood group 'O' donors in Ilorin

Abstract

Sera from 250 selected group ‘O' donors were screened for anti A and anti B haemolysins. Those that was positive were titrated for haemolytic antibodies and the result read both visually and spectrophotometrically. The visual and spectrophotometry titres were then compared. The prevalence of (X and P haemolysin was 23.2%. Haemolytic anti-B occurred twice as frequent as haemolytic anti-A but the titre of haemolytic anti-A was higher than haemolytic anti-B. There was no relationship between sex and age and the prevalence of haemolysins. Significant visual titre of 8 and above w a s found in 18.5% of lytic anti-A and 13.2% of lytic anti-B, but the proportion of the whole study population with significant visual titre of 8 and above was low, i.e., 2.0% for anti-A and 2.8% for anti-B. On the average the spectrophotometric titres were consistently one-fold higher than the visual titres.