A descriptive study of the variation in baseline levels of antiendotoxin core antibodies between US and UK populations.

Low levels of naturally occurring antibodies to the core section of endotoxin (EndoCAb) have been shown to be predictors of poor outcome following major surgery. We performed a retrospective study comparing pre-operative levels in US surgical patients, UK surgical patients and healthy volunteers. Both IgM and IgG EndoCAb levels were higher in the US surgical patients when compared with the other groups (approximately twice as high in the case of IgG EndoCAb). This may reflect genetic or environmental variability between the patient groups, differences in the disease processes, the disparity in the delivery of health care between the two countries or degradation of the samples in transfer.