Kekkaku(Tuberculosis)

From experiences of our laboratory concerned with the identification of mycobacteria since 20years, a simple identification system of clinically important mycobacteria was presented for clinicallaboratories which are not specialized for this work. The system consists of 10 tests (9 media) shownin Table 1. The results of the tests on various mycobacteria are shown in Tables 2 and 3. Fromthese data, an identification table shown in Table 4 was presented.

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The therapeutic effects of antituberculous drugs were evaluated in vivo using conventional mice (dd white strain) infected intravenously with Mycobacterium kansasii (KMC 1113 strain, isolated from sputum of a patient). The drugs evaluated were RFP, INH, EB, SM and TH, which were all admin istered to the animals in dosages roughly comparable with clinical use except INH. Successive viable units of bacilli in the lungs as well as in the spleens of mice were counted on 1% Ogawa media using 10-fold dilution technique of the homogenized organs at one, three, six, nine and fifteen weeks after challenge of the bacilli, while the administration of the drugs was continued for eight weeks, in six days a week, starting one week after challenge. The histopathological findings were observed in gross pa thology and in histologic sections of lung, liver, spleen and kidney as well.
The control untreated mice, at 6 weeks after infection, showed about 100-fold increased viable units of bacilli in 10mg of lungs, as well as about 10-fold increased viable units of bacilli in 10mg of spleeno, which regressed gradually to the same level of initial viable units at the end of the experiment. During early phase of the treatment, SM, RFP, TH and EB treated mice showed decrease of viable units of bacilli both in lungs and spleens. However, at the end of the experiment, there was no signif icant difference in viable units of lungs between untreated and treated mice.
The main histopathological findings of the organs of infected mice were diffuse proliferative and granulomatous changes in lungs, and granuloma formation in the liver. Among the treated mice, the mice treated with SM or RFP revealed less significant histopathological changes in lungs compared with control untreated and the mice treated with the drugs other than SM and RFP.

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