When rectal swabs were examined from 672 dogs in Tehran, Iran, 52 (7-7 per cent) yielded Salmonellae of 20 different serotypes. The 672 dogs examined comprised 472 household pets, 181 kennel dogs and 19 strays. Tehy showed an incidence of 4-4 per cent, 15-5 per cent and 15-8 per cent respectively.

Salmonellae were isolated from the faeces from 17 of 170 (10%) wild house mice. Salmonella typhimurium was isolated from 10, S. typhimurium, var. Copenhagen from 2, S. thompson from 1, and S. muenchen from 4. It was concluded that house mice could be a reservoir of infection and play an important role in human and animal salmonellosis.

Treatment of mouse embryo fibroblasts (MEF) grown in vitro with purified staphylococcal exfoliative toxin (ET) increased the concanavalin A (Con A) agglutinability of MEF 3.5-fold over control cells. Possible explanations for this phenomenon were investigated. ET lacked proteolytic activity on denatured casein. Con A, however, was found to interact directly with ET as evidenced by the formation of precipitation in an agar gel diffusion plate and in increased turbidity in solution. This interaction was inhibited by a-methyl-D-glucopyranoside. The ability of Con A to precipitate with ET suggests that the toxin contains a carbohydrate component and that the carbohydrate associated with ET is branched rather than linear. An analysis of a purified preparation of ET indicated the presence of 9% carbohydrate and no lipid.

SUMMARYType 19 Diplococcus pneumoniae was identified as the organism responsible for an outbreak of pneumonia.

Tox-+ staphylococcal strains, as opposed to Tox-minus strains, produce epidermal exfoliation within 18 h after direct subcutaneous or intraperitoneal injection into newborn mice. The extracellular product responsible for exfoliation is termed exfoliative toxin (ET). When culture supernatant fluid from the plasmid-cured Tox-minus substrains UT 0100 or UT 0111 or from six naturally occurring phage group 2 Tox-minus strains was concentrated 20-fold and inoculated into newborn mice, ET activity could be detected. The Tox-minus, cured derivatives produced ET at levels which were 32 minus and 64-fold lower than the amounts made by their Tox-+ parent strains. Since these Tox-minus, cured substrains contained no plasmid deoxyribonucleic acid, it was postulated that the product possessing ET activity in strains UT 0100 and UT 0111 was made by chromosomal genes. This product has been isolated and purified from strain UT 0100 and appears as two faint bands after electrophoresis on polyacrylamide gels and corresponds in position to a heavy band of ET isolated from the Tox-+ strain UT 0007.