Permeability to egg albumin in peptic ulcer

Conclusions

1. It seems that individuals without gross lesions in the mucosa of the upper portions of the alimentary tract do not give the egg white precipitin test in the urine, excepting in 20% of cases that might possibly be considered as having given a false positive result.

2. Patients with active peptic ulcers whether located in the stomach or duodenum have yielded the precipitin reaction in 75% of the cases. This might be considered to introduce a possibility of a 25% false negative reaction.

3. Patients with healed peptic ulcer gave a negative reaction in all but 20% of the cases studied.

4. In spite of the possibility of false positive and false negative reactions in a certain percentage of cases, it seems that the test may be of value as corroborative evidence of the probable presence, or absence, of active peptic ulcer, or other mucous membrane lesions, in the upper portion of the digestive tube, and in differentiation from gall bladder and other diseases producing similar clinical pictures.