Protective effect of tumor-bearing mice against Candida albicans infection was studied. Two or more weeks after sarcoma 180 tumor cell transplantation, the solid tumor-bearing mice showed a significant protective effect against C. albicans infection compared with the case of normal mice. With tumor-bearing mice a marked reduction of proliferation of C. albicans cells in the kidney was observed. The number of peripheral blood polymorphonuclear leucocytes from the tumor-bearing mice increased with the tumor growth. Furthermore, the candidacidal activity of the leucocytes from the tumor-bearing mice was stronger than that of the leucocytes from normal mice. From these results, sarcoma 180-bearing mice seem to show enhanced elimination of C. albicans cells by increasing the number and candidacidal activity of the leucocytes.

View full abstract

Strains in various genera and species of yeasts were surveyed for killer activity against Candida albicans. Of 230 strains of the genus Candida, two (C. glabrata TIMM 1062 and C. famata TIMM 1061) had killer activity against C. albicans. Of 36 strains of the genus Hansenula, six showed killer activity against C. albicans. Hansenula anomala TIMM 0705, in particular, exhibited potent killer activity against C. albicans. Of 51 strains of the genus Pichia, 11 had killer activity against C. albicans.
None of seven strains of Cryptococcus neoformans, nine of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, three of Schizosaccharomyces, two of Torulaspora delbrueckii or one of Zygosaccharomyces rouxii had killer activity against any of the tester strains.

View full abstract

A 19-year-old male developed acute lymphocytic leukemia complicated with pulmonary penicilliosis. Marked leukopenia with a high fever continued for more than two weeks. A strain of Candida glabrata was isolated from blood culture. Treatment was initiated by combination therapy with antifungal drugs and anticancer drugs. To treat the suspected infection with this fungus, oral flucytosine and intravenous miconazole were administered, but the clinical symptoms were not alleviated. Thus oral fluconazole was added to the regimen. X-ray examinations revealed that the infiltration in the middle and lower fields of the right lung gradually became localized, and the findings suggested the formation of a fungus ball. The patient died of right pneumothorax on the 66th hospital day.
At autopsy, mass lesions were detected in the thoracic cavity about 4×4×5cm in size in the right middle lobe and about 1×1×3cm in size in the left upper lobe. These mass lesions were filled with necrotic lung tissues, and they thus differed in nature from the so-called fungus ball. Those lesions and the cavity wall contained numerous fungal elements consisting of dichotomous septated hyphae. Two morphologically different fungi were isolated from the mass lesion in the right lung : one isolate was identified as Penicillium citrinum and the other was a Penicillium species without reaching the final identification. The morphology of these two isolates was examined in detail with an electron microscope.
This seems to be the first reported case of pulmonary penicilliosis due to P. citrinum and an unidentified Penicillium sp.

View full abstract

Virulence of seven clinical isolates of Cryptococous neoformans against mice was examined by using different routes of inoculation : intracerebral, intravenous, and intraperitoneal routes. Two virulent strains, TIMM0362 and TIMM0372, were chosen on the basis of difference in the thickness of capsule and used to produce a murine model of pulmonary cryptococcosis following inoculation. With the animal model thus produced, histopathological studies were performed during a 51 day experimental period after inoculation. In mice inoculated with TIMM0372, typical granulomatous lesions developed in the lung without fatal outcome. By contrast, inoculation with TIMM0362 in mice produced fatal infection which was characterized by development of cerebral lesions, delay of histiocytic response to invading organisms and nonsuppurative destruction of the lung tissue. In this animal model, it was also demonstrated that the presence of capsules above a certain size level in cryptococci may be essential to protect the organisms from defense mechanisms of the host and from developing lethal infections with systemic dissemination, although there was no correlation between virulence and capsular size of cryptococci. However, for some unknown reason, host response to invasion of these two strains of cryptococci was distinctly different from each other.
These results suggest that in the murine model of pulmonary cryptococcosis the degree of virulence of infected organisms principally depends on the type of local tissue response, especially response of alveolar the surrounding macrophages.

View full abstract

Twelve patients, five men and seven women, with Malassezia Folliculitis are reported here. Their average age was 25.8. Seasons of onset were spring or summer. They developed follicular red papules and small pustules with itching mainly on the upper trunk and neck. The lesions had worsened with sweat, steroid ointment and sea bathing. Direct examinations and cultures of the follicular contents showed large numbers of Pityrosporum orbiculare. Treatment with topical imidazole cream was effective.

View full abstract

A Japanese woman with cutaneous histoplasmosis is presented. The patient developed cutaneous lesions consisting of grouped and confluent papules on several parts of the body after settling in Santa Cruz City, Bolivia. The histoplasmin test was positive. Histological sections of the skin showed a few intracellular yeast forms of the organism in the dermis. Histoplasma capsulatum was isolated from biopsy specimens of the skin. The morphological characters of the fungus were described in detail. There was no focus of infection in the lung or other internal organs.

View full abstract

In vitro and in vivo antifungal activities of amphotericin B (AMPH [B]) were compared with those of ketoconazole, fluconazole, itraconazole, miconazole, nystatin and flucytosine, which have been used for systemic fungal infection or are undergoing of clinical trials in Japan. From the viewpoint of MIC values, AMPH [B] was found to show the lowest among the tested antifungals, without any sign of emergence of resistant strains and was considered still to be a useful antifungal agent.
The sensitivity disk agar (SDA), which has been used in the determination of MIC in bacteria in Japan, was found to be suitable medium for the determination of antifungal activities, when compared with Sabouraud dextrose (SGA) agar and yeast morphology agar (YMA). Actually, the MIC values of SDA were about one-fourth, those of YMA and SGA.
Effectiveness of orally administered AMPH [B] against Candida albicans infection in mice was also studied and the results showed that 50 to 500mg/kg of AMPH [B] can protect mice from infection. However, it was also found that C. albicans was still recovered from the kindney of surviving mice 30 days after the treatment with AMPH [B]. HPLC analysis proved that the serum level of AMPH [B] after oral administration can reach to the vicinity of the MIC values of 0.01 to 0.5μg/ml. The importance of sub-MIC of AMPH [B] was also suggested in the elimination of the fungus from the infected animals. Results on the combination effect of oral AMPH [B] with antifungal BRM, lentinan, were also repoorted.

View full abstract

A case of cutaneous nocardiosis caused by N. asteroides and an electron microscopic study of granules obtained from the lesion are reported. A 68-year-old man had a two year history of an erythematous, oozing and ulcerated plaque, 3×4cm in size on his left foot. In histopathological study, some granules were observed with polymorphonuclear leukocytes and lymphoid cells around them in the epidermis. Ultrastructurally, these granules consisted of numerous bacterial cells which had trilaminar cell walls, namely, dark-staining inner, electron lucent median and light-staining outer layer, and cell membrane. These findings suggested that the structure of the cell wall in our case corresponded to that of cultured N. asteroides strain in the log phase growth.

View full abstract

A total of 75 samples of commercial tofu (soybean curd), 25 samples of water-packed tofu “momen”, 25 of water-packed tofu “kinugoshi” and 25 of vacuum-packaged tofu (heated after packaging), were examined for total fungal counts. Whereas no mold nor yeast was detected in the vacuum-packaged tofu, high levels of contamination (more than 1×10³cfu/g) were found in 2 samples (8%) of the water-packed tofu “momen” and 3 (12%) of the water-packed “kinugoshi”. Exophiala (E. moniliae, E. dermatitidis, E. jeanselsmei), Lecythophora (L. hoffmannii) and Phoma, most of which are in the category of pathogenic dematiaceous fungi, were isolated and identified as the dosminant contaminants.

View full abstract

MH-0685, a new vinyl imidazole antimycotic, exhibited potent activity against a wide variety of fungi, especially Trichophyton, Epidermophyton and Microsporum spp. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of MH-0685 against these fungi was 0.1 to 1.56 μg/ml. Less activity was observed against yeast-like fungi and gram-positive bacteria, and gram-negative bacteria were insensitive to the antimycotic. The degree of efficacy was affected by the organism density in the test medium. The activity was pH dependent and rose with increasing medium pH. Addition of blood or serum to the media resulted in a slight reduction of the antimycotic activity of MH-0685.

View full abstract