Bacillus-like bodies in Whipple's disease; disappearance with clinical remission after antibiotic therapy

Encephalitis with myoclonus in Whipple's disease.

“…Ashworth, Douglas, Reynolds, and Thomas (1964) have shown that the PAS-positive granules and rods correspond with the intracytoplasmic accumulation of residual bacterial bodies. The PAS-positivity is very likely due to the presence of mucopolysaccharides in the bacterial membrane.…”

Whipple's disease confined to the brain: a case studied clinically and pathologically

“…Recently by electron microscopy the macrophages were shown to contain bacilli in intact form as well as in various stages of degradation into membrane-like structures derived from bacterial walls and responsible for the strong PAS staining (Chears and Ashworth, 1961;Yardley and Hendrix, 1961;Kurtz et al, 1962;Kent et al, 1963;Trier et al, 1965). Antibiotic therapy resulted in improvement of the gastrointestinal symptoms (Paulley, 1952;England et al, 1960;Kent et al, 1963;Ashworth et al, 1964;Trier et al, 1965) and of the pathological changes in the small intestine (Kent et al, 1963;Ashworth et al, 1964;Trier et al, 1965). A number of bacteria were cultured from the lesions or from the blood, including atypical alpha streptococci (Charache et al, 1966;Knox et al, 1968;Clany et al, 1975), brucella (Kok et al, 1964), aerobic (Kent et al, 1963;Dybkaer and Kok, 1965) and anaerobic (Caravati et al, 1963;Prevot and Morel, 1964;Greenberger et al, 1971) corynebacteriae and haemophilus (Kok et al, 1964;Kjaerheim et al, 1966).…”