Carrion's Disease. I. Behavior of the Etiological Agent Within Cells Growing or Surviving in vitro. ∗

Abstract

Conclusions

Organisms cultivated in leptospira-medium, whether from the blood or tissues of Oroya-fever patients or from cutaneous nodules excised from patients with verruga peruana, invariably behaved as facultative intracellular parasites when cultivated in vitro with growing or surviving mammalian cells. Organisms cultivated from the blood of monkeys infected with human material from either Oroya fever or verruga peruana patients behaved similarly. A characteristic and uniform pattern of intracytoplasmic clustering was obtained with cultures from all of the above sources, this pattern being essentially identical with that seen in naturally infected human cells in both conditions (see Paper II). These observations substantiate the belief that Oroya fever and verruga peruana are caused by the same microorganism.