Annual surveys were carried out on about 200, 000 persons working with eating facilities and catering services in Tokyo every year during a five-year period beginning in 1959 in order to detect etiological organisms of estival intestinal diseases. In these surveys, dysentery bacilli were detected and isolated strains examined for sensitivity to antibiotics. As a result, the following trend was observed during this quinennial period.
1. The rate of dysentery bacilli from healthy persons was 0.32 per cent in 1959 and decreased gradually to 0.14 per cent in 1962 and 0.18 per cent in 1963. It was reduced to half in these five years.
2. The predominant types of isolated organisms were flex. 2a, 2b, and 3a and sonnei in 1959, occupying as much as 80 per cent of the total organisms detected. They consisted of three types, flex. 2a, sonnei, and 3a, in 1963, amounting to more than 80 per cent of the total organisms isolated.
3. The rate of drug-resistance of these isolated strains was one-third - one-half that of the strains derived from patients. This rate, which was 4.0 per cent in 1959, increased about four times in five years, reaching 14.6 per cent in 1963. It is of particular interest to note that such strains as resistant to three different antibiotics increased in number among the resistant strains isolated in later years. Such triple resistant strains occupied 52 per cent of the whole resistant strains detected in 1959 and 70 per cent of those isolated in 1963.
Antibiotic-resistant strains detected from healthy subjects have been even increasing in number. So have been strains resistant to three different antibiotics found among them. This constitutes an important problem in the control of dysentery.

View full abstract

The prevalence of scarlet fever was observed from October 1962 to August 1963.
Hemolytic streptococci of Lancefield's A group 6 type were isolated at a very high rate from the throats of scarlet fever patients. In the prevalent period the cocci, same type as the prevalent ones had been distributed densely among the healthy school boys and girls. The cases were as frequently encountered in boys as in girls at the age of six as the peak. Drug senistivity of hemolytic streptococci isolated from either the patients or healthy school boys and girls were about the same as the usual reports, but two strains of cocci with 50 mcg/ml sensitivity against Tetracycline were found.

View full abstract

By means of fluorescent antibody technique, the examination of dysentery bacilli in feces was carried out, resultng in the following findings.
1) The commercial Shigella typing serum, rabbit euglobulin used in clinical laboratories was found to be usable for the detection of dysentery bacilli by the fluorescent antibody technique.
2) The rate of dysentery bacilli detection in feces from patietns did not notably vary according to the method used, the roultine culture method or the present technique.
3) In the fluorescent antibody technique a cross reaction was occasionally observed between dysentery antiserum and a few cultured strains of enterobacteriae, especially E. coli. Several cases of patients infected with E. coli which positively reacted with the present dysentery antibody were noted.
4) Inspite of the above cross reaction, the present technique is believed to have several advantages as follows. In the majority of the cases of dysentery, the technique is able to quickly identify the group specificity of dysentery bacilli directly in feces. Furthermore,
the possible presence of Shigella in feces boydii which is difficult to identify by the ordinary culture method owing to its K-antigen and of some other strains of dysentery bacilli similar to E. coli in biological characteristics can be rather easily recognized by the present technique.

View full abstract