Development and Refinement
The antibody test was developed by Wassermann, Julius Citron, and Albert Neisser at the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases in 1906. The test was a growth from the work of Bordet and Gengou on complementing-fixation reaction, published in 1901, and the positive reaction is sometimes called the Bordet-Gengou-Wassermann reaction or Bordet-Wassermann reaction.
The Wassermann test has been refined - the Kahn test, and the Kolmer test - and it is rarely used today. Replacement tests such as the VDRL test and the RPR test, initially based on flocculation techniques (Hinton), have been shown to produce far fewer false positive results. Indeed the "biologic false positives" of modern tests usually indicate a serious alternate condition, often an autoimmune disease.
Read more about this topic: Wassermann Test
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