The serum proteins of healthy adult Nigerians.

Chemical and electrophoretic analyses of the serum proteins have become routine diagnostic investigations in many hospital laboratories. The albumin/globulin ratio decreases in a variety of disease conditions, including liver diseases, the nephrotic syndrome, protein malnutrition, myeloma, etc. It is therefore very important that the normal variations in the albumin-globulin ratio should be well understood if serious errors in interpretation are to be avoided. Routine analyses of sera sent to our laboratories at Ibadan have made it apparent to us that the distribution of albumin and globulin in the serum of apparently healthy adult Nigerians is sign-ificantly different from that generally accepted as normal in Europeans. In most of these sera we find that ratio depressed, which in many cases may be less than 1, and yet we can find no other evidence of any of those diseases which are generally believed to cause a depressed albumin/globulln ratio. We therefore decided to carry out a study of the serum proteins of healthy adult Nigerians with a view to establishing normal values for the local population. The following communication is a record of the results.