As a link in the chain of the studies to clarify the epidemiological background of the human salmonellosis, an examination was conducted on pigeons living gregariously in Hiroshima City as to their Salmonella excretion in the period from 1978 to 1979.
About 1, 000 fresh droppings of pigeons were collected from three parks every month, and over a oneyear period 12, 840 droppings in total were examined, out of which 213 strains of Salmonella were isolated and classified into 12 serotypes. The rate of detection from pigeon droppings reached the maximum in summer keeping pace with incidence of human sporadic cases, and marked decrease was observed in winter. The most probable number of salmonellae in pigeon droppings was enumerated to be 10
1/g-10
4/ g, and it was considered that salmonellae are not passing through the body of pigeon temporarily but can multiply therein, thus pigeons play a role of reservoir.
Among salmonellae detected,
S. typhimurium was counted to be 193 strains (90.6%) as an overwhelming majority, all of which were
S. typhimurium var.
copenhagen except one strain. As to other 11 serotypes, there were 20 strains including
S. thompson, S. montevideo S, .livingstone, S. infantis, S. london, S. cerro, etc., which are just generally isolated from human patients with acute diarrhea. Nearly a half of the isolates from the human sporadic cases in the same period was
S. typhimurium. Thus, to study a relationship between those strains of
S. typhimurium originated from human and pigeon, a series of comparative studies was made on this serotype concerning the presence of O5-antigen and biotype as rereferred to by Cordano et al., Brandis (modified) and Duguid et al. (primary). The 96.9% of pigeonoriginated strains corresponded to a biotype b: 10: 25/O5
-, which was notobserved in the human-originated strains at all. However, three biotypes, namely, a: 1: 1/O5
-, a: 2: 17/O5
- and b: 10: 26/O5
+ were common in both human and pigeon originated strains, among which the former two types were observed popularly in the human-originated strains, and antibiograms of pigeon isolates well agreed with human isolates tested. In serotypes other than
S. typhimurium, the biochemical properties and antibiograms of both human-and pigeon-originated strains also well corresponded.
From the above results, it can be considered that the possibility of association of pigeons with human salmonellosis is far higher in other biotypes and serotypes, although the rate of detection is relatively low (about 10% of the total isolates), than
S. typhirnuriumv ar.
copenhagenb: 10: 25/O5
- which is detected at the highest rate from pigeon droppings
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