No abstract

Okinawa Prefecture is an endemic area of Strongyloides stercoralis infection. Since treat ment of this infection remains unsatisfactory, we evaluated the efficacy of ivermectin. Twenty three patients were treated with a single oral dose of ivermectin (mean ± SD, 105.5 ± 20.8 meg/ kg of body weight), followed by a second dose two weeks later. The rate of cure was 85.7% at 2 weeks after the first treatment, and 90.5% at 2 weeks after the second treatment. Side effects occurred in 2 patients (8.7%), but they were mild and transient. The results indicate that ivermectin might be useful and relatively safe for the therapy of Strongyloides stercoralis infection as an alternative to thiabendazole or mebendazole. (Internal Medicine 31: 310-312, 1992)

The inhibitory effect of Clostridium butyricum MIYAIRI 588 against various enteropathogens was investigated in mixed cultures. It was observed that C. butyricum M588 inhibited the growth of Vibrio cholerae O1, V. cholerae non-O1, Aeromonas hydrophila, and Shigella flexneri. Considering that the interaction between C. butyricum and Shigella is especially important because of their proliferation site in the lower intestine, further examinations were carried out on Shigella in particular. Results were as follows: 1) In BHI broth culture of Shigella, the pH of culture fluid went down to 5.2, but the growth of Shigella was not inhibited. 2) In the mixed culture of Shigella and C. butyricum, the growth of Shigella was inhibited, nevertheless the pH of the culture fluid was 5.6. 3) In the mixed culture with phosphate buffered BHI maintaining the pH higher than 6.0, the growth of Shigella was inhibited. 4) In case of pure culture of C. butyricum in BHI broth, the pH of culture fluid indicated 5.5, and Shigella failed to grow in the cell free culture supernatant. 5) The growth of Shigella was not inhibited in the culture supernatant when the pH was adjusted at 7.2. These results suggested that the inhibition of Shigella in the mixed culture with C. butyricum was not due to a single factor such as pH or fatty acid etc. but due to multifactors including live cells of C. butyricum.

No abstract

Abstract-Each addition of some short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) into casamino acids-yeast extract culture media at a concentration of 2 mg/ml reduced the pro duction of heat-labile enterotoxin (LT) from enterotoxigenic Escherichia co/i in proportion to the elongation of carbon chain from C-2 to C-7. The LT-production was inversely recovered by the addition of longer chain fatty acids. The reduction of LT-production by SCFAs seems to depend on the disturbance of the biosyn thesis of LT itself, since LT was not detected in the cells treated with n-heptyric acid at 2 mg/ml, which abolished the LT-production.