Effects of inoculating monilia isolated from psoriatic patients into human beings.

Abstract

It has been shown by Fleisher and Wachowiak 1 that monilia or monilia-like organisms were found in 85 per cent of the stools of psoriatics, that similar or identical organisms could be cultivated or demonstrated in the skin scrapings in 35 per cent of cases, and that these organisms were present in the blood in 14 per cent of cases. However, in normal individuals such organisms were found in only 6 per cent of the stools, and in our series never on the skin or in the blood. Furthermore, the injection of an emulsion of the killed organisms led, in a certain number of intractable cases, to a startling and rapid clearing of the lesions. Efforts had also been made to reproduce the disease (skin lesions) in rabbits, guinea pigs and dogs, but without success. We believed that this evidence suggested very strongly that there exists some etiological relationship between the monilia and the occurrence of psoriatic lesions.

Recently I have studied the effects of applying the monilia isolated from cases of psoriasis to abraded surfaces of the skin of human beings.

In normal individuals, two small areas, 2 to 3 mm. square on the upper arm were denuded of the superficial layers of epidermis. One area served as control and this healed rapidly, king practically indistinguishable from the surrounding uninjured skin, after about eighteen to twenty days; at no time was ldesquamation or scaling noted on or about these control areas. To the other areas there was applied a drop of a mixed emulsion of live monilia. Here a scab formed which persisted for about two weeks, and usually during this period there was a varying degree of itching.