- Volume 3, Issue 1, 1970

Streptococcus MG has been found to pass through a growth phase previously described for Mycococcus (Krassilnikov). The Gram-positive cocci, in the course of prolonged culture, become variable in size, and produce projections which develop into weakly acid-fast rods. Comparable Gram-positive cocci, isolated from human serum, showed a similar variation.

Bacterium-like structures were seen in renal casts in the urine from eight patients with pyelonephritis and from two with glomerulonephritis. Although these structures were morphologically identical with bacteria, an attempt to demonstrate their nature with fluorescent antisera was unsuccessful.

Most of this work was performed in the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and I am grateful to the clinical staff there for access to their patients and case records.

Trichosporon cutaneum, the causative organism of white piedra, was isolated from a brain abscess superimposed on as econdary metastatic deposit from a bronchial adenocarcinoma.

Results of a histopathological study of the tissues of a mouse experimentally infected with Mycobacterium leprae indicate that leprosy bacilli can cross the blood-brain barrier and multiply in the brain and that they gain access to ganglion cells by a haematogenous route. The findings are discussed with reference to lepromatous leprosy in man and the use of the thymectomised irradiated mouse as a model for the study of the disease.

A description is given of the ultrastructure of Giardia lamblia found in three jejunal biopsies from children. The unique median body, vacuoles and cytoplasmic clefts of this protozoon are illustrated. No evidence of penetration of the trophozoite into the jejunal mucosa or deeper tissues is demonstrable.

This work was supported in part by a Grant from the Wellcome Trust to one of the authors (S. E. H. B.).