Bacteriological properties, including phage type, drug resistance, transductivity of drug resistance to coli, colicine type, of 22 strains of Shigella sonnei isolated from patients and carriers in an outbreak of dysentery occurring in a district of Ishidoria Town, Iwate prefecture, were investigated. The epidemic, . due presumably to the contamination of water supplies, started on Sept. 10, 1965, initially in a creche in that locality.
The phage typing revealed that all 22 strains were sensitive to T2, but not to Ti and T5. Therefore, according to the difference of attitude to T3, T4, T6 and T7, they were divided into the following: three groups.
1) Six strains; sensitive to T3, T6, T7; type A
2) Five strains; sensitive to T3, T4, T6, T7; type B
3) Eleven strains; sensitive to T3 alone; type D
The strains of type D were found in those having the onset of their illness before Sept. 19, whearas that of type A or type B, found in those having that after Sept. 22. This fact indicates the possibility that the epidemic, which could be categorized, commonsensewise, as a single epidemic, could have been caused by strains plural in its epidemiological origin.
Within the same family, however, the strains isolated were proved to be identical in its phage type; that made the confirmation possible that the infection within the families took such a way as from infants of the crèche to their families.
The epidemiological meaning of 4 colicine types and the low transductivity of drug resistance occurring in these strains should be clarified in the further and more comprehensive surveys of this kind of epidemic.
At least, the usefulness of phage typing in pursueing the infection routes in bacillary dysentery was, confirmed in this experiment.
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