The author carried out epidemiological and bacteriological investigations on two outbreak cases due to pathogenic Escherichia coli 0124: K72: H-which occurred in Shizuoka prefecture, each in 1963 and 1966.
The results obtained were as follows:
1) In the case (case A) of July, 1966, 244 pupils (56.1%) out of 435 who ate school lunch at a primary school, in which a possible suspect was boiled vegitables, were manifested for a week and treated as food poisoning case. Some of the patients, however, showed dysentery-like symptoms and even secondary infections occurred to their families, the nature of epidemic much resembling to that of bacillary dysentery.
In the case of September, 1963 (case B), 17 (54.8%) out of 31 mountain villagers who ate “ohagi”(rice dumplings covered with red bean jam) exhibited signs of food poisoning after an incubation period of 17 hours on the average. This outbreak was a serious one in which the clinical manifestaion was typical acute gastroenteritis and four children eventually died.
2) In both cases, pathogenic E. coli 0124: K72: H-was regarded as causative agent, as no other hitherto known pathogenic bacteria were isolated in any case. Excretion of the causative agent after the recovery ceased within 2 weeks in case B. In case A, however, 8.7 per cent of the cases carried the agent even about 10 months after the clinical recovery.
3) In both cases, almost all of isolated strains had the same biochemical properties. They, except a very few, showed the same pattern of drug sensitivity. The few exceptional strains were exclusively those originated from carriers who had been treated with antibiotics.
4) An increase in agglutination titer of the serum of convalescent patients against the causative agent was observed in both cases, particularly outstandingly in case B. It was confirmed that the hemagglutination test was more efficient than the bacterial agglutination test in the estimation of serum agglutinin titer.
5) The results obtained from both cases suggest that E. coli of this type is different from any other species of pathogenic E. coli in such point as possessing pathogenicity close to that of dysentery bacilli, and its clinical course is much closer to that of bacillary dysentery than usual food poisoning. On this ground, discussions were made on the epidemiological importance of this type of E. coli and the necessity of an administrative stance similar to that to bacillary dysentery in handling this infection.

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Therapeutic effects of Kanendomycin (KDM) have been studied comparatively with that of Kanamycin (KM) for bacillary dysentery and its allied disorders by means of a double blind method in three hospitals specializing infectious diseases, each in Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe.
In the present study, the same type of capsules was prepared to contain either 167mg of KDM or 250mg of KM, respectively.
The treated objects consisted of 81 cases. As the results of the treatment, there occurred no significant difference between KDM and KM-treated groups, as far as the effects such as defervescence, recovery of stools and stoppage of bacillary discharge are concerned.
The antibacterial activities of the both antibiotics were compared on 46 strains of shigellae isolated from the patients, and KDM exhibited a little stronger activity than KM.

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[in Japanese]

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