To study the present state of leptospirosis in Nagasaki and Saga prefectures, the agglutinationlysis tests were performed on 293 sera gathered from four local hospitals.
Of these sera, 24 (8.2%) were proved positive at the dilution level 1: 80 or higher. According to the types of leptospira, this figure was further divided as follows. 12 to L. hebdomadis, 8 to L. australis A, 3 to L. icterohaemorrhagiae, and 1 to L. canicola. Quite uuexpectedly, not a case of L. autumnalis infection was encountered which was the most common type of leptospirosis in this locality during the past thirty years.
in Nagasaki Prefecture, at present, two districts are regarded as the main epidemiological foci of the disease - the coastal area of Isahaya Bay which has been recently uncovered, and the well known Hasami district. Judging from the informations about the cases in both districts, it has been the recent trend, unlike the past, that the contamination through harvesting the rice. crops in the paddy fields rarely occurs, but the contact with sewage or foul swimming-pool wateris frequently the cause of epidemics.
Along with the standard agglutination-lysis test, the microtechnique advocated by Galton et al. was attempted and deliberated on its value as a diagnostic method. It is the authors' viewthat this technique is suitable for the screening test provided, of course, the materials are free from any contaminant.
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