Uchida and coworkers (1) reported a prolongation of platelet survival time in 3 patients with ITP after high dose intravenous IgG. We can confirm these results in 2 patients. In one of these patients we infused IgG during survival time measurement and observed an immediate prolongation of platelet life span (PLS). Patient E. F. is a 44 year old female with chronic ITP since 9 months. She was refractory to corticosteroids and underwent treatment before splenectomy. Patient G. B. is a 45 year old male who suffered from ITP since 12 years. Treatment with IgG was planned the day after survival time measurement. However, clinical symptoms of intracerebral hemorrhage forced us to start with IgG infusions 4 hr after infusion of 51Cr-labelled platelets. Cerebral hemorrhage was not confirmed by computertomography. Four days after the last IgG infusion he underwent splenectomy. IgG was infused at a dose of 0.4 g/kg BW on 5 consecutive days. The source of IgG was P-propiolactone modified IgG (Intraglobin2). Mean PLS was measured with 51Cr-labelled allogeneic platelets from ABO-compatible donors. The methods of platelet preparation and calculation of PLS are described by the Expert Panel of the International Committee for Standardiza­ tion in Hematology (2). The half disappearance time was calcu­ lated graphically on semilogarithmic paper and by the least squares method fitting to exponential model. PLS measurements were performed in patient E.F. on day 1 and 6 of IgG treatment and in patient G.B. on day 1 and 6 of IgG therapy. Patient E. F. showed a prolongation of survival half time from 0.5 to 22.6 hr (Table 1). Platelet count began to rise immediately

A 16-year-old male patient is described with chronic autoimmune thrombocytopenic purpura and, after two years, "warm" autoimmune hemolytic anemia (Evans syndrome) who transiently developed complement-fixing platelet autoantibodies. The autoreactivity of these antibodies was established by quantitative complement fixation as well as by absorption and elution studies using autologous platelets. We believe this to be the first documented case with this very rare and peculiar type of platelet autoantibody.