Brdicka Filtrate Test

For diagnostic purposes, the following procedure of the Brdicka filtrate test is to be recommended. Add 0.4 ml of fresh blood serum to 1 ml 0.1 M KOH and allow to stand for 45 min. Precipitate the proteins at room temperature by the addition of 1 ml of 20% sulphosalicylic acid. After 10 min, filter the precipitate through a hard filter paper and add 0.5 ml of clear filtrate to 5 ml of buffered hexamino-cobalt(III) solution (10 M in 0.1 M NH4CI, 1 M NH3). Compare the increase in the height of the wave of the serum filtrate from the patients with the average height of that obtained from 10 or 20 normal humans. 

It was at first assumed that an increase of the catalytic doublewave in this so called Brdicka filtrate test is characteristic of cancer diseases. Later, however, it was recognized that the situation was complicated by the fact that whereas about 90 per cent of the cancer cases studied showed an elevated catalytic wave (only small nonmetastatic skin tumors give invalid results), several other diseases, mainly accompanied with fever and inflammatory... 

The polarographic examination of sulphosalicylic filtrate has been applied by Brdicka and later on by many others to the determination of some degradation products or fractions of the serum proteins in blood of ill humans [3,127,130,147-153]. The increase of Brdicka protein wave in sulphosalicylic filtrate is characteristic of sera of patients suffering from cancer or some inflammatory disease. The Brdicka test is simple, quick and reproducible. Sulphydryl compounds which cause the increase of the... 

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