1. The bacteriology of the pus from 79 cases of tropical pyomyositis has been studied. In 74 cases Staphylococcus aureus was isolated in pure culture.2. Phage typing showed that 60% of the pyomyositis strains belonged to phage Group II as compared with 22% for miscellaneous hospital infections and 21% for nasal carrier strains.3. A high proportion of the Group II strains from pyomyositis were found to be penicillin resistant and it is thought that this is unlikely to be due to the use of penicillin therapeutically but is probably a natural characteristic of the strains.4. Other suggested aetiological factors in pyomyositis such as leptospirosis and syphilis have been investigated but no association has been found.5. The phage types of staphylococci found in Uganda have been compared with those reported from England and Australia and found not to be strikingly different.
Myoadenylate deaminase deficiency is believed to reflect a genetic deficiency of skeletal muscle, but its pattern of inheritance has not been established. We examined, histochemically and by quantitative biochemical assay, muscle biopsy specimens from 3 putative carriers of this disorder. Adenylate kinase and creatine kinase were assayed in parallel with adenylate deaminase in order to establish enzyme activity ratios and the variation of each enzyme with fiber-type distribution. Control tissue consisted of 34 biopsy specimens without notable abnormalities from 30 patients, and included 4 specimen pairs with disparate fiber-type contributions. By linear regression analysis, adenylate deaminase level averaged 2.8-fold higher, and adenylate kinase 4.5-fold higher, in type 2 than in type 1 fibers, whereas creatine kinase level did not differ. The slopes of the regression lines resulting from analysis of the four specimen pairs from individual patients agreed well with the overall regression line in each plot. The 3 putative carriers had adenylate deaminase levels 2.5 to 5.7 times lower than the mean control value for their fiber-type distribution, but at least 20 times higher than their enzyme-deficient kinfolk. This finding indicates that a carrier state does exist, and that the deficiency state reflects an autosomal recessive inheritance pattern. Three additional biopsy specimens were excluded from evaluation when preliminary analysis showed elevated adenylate kinase/adenylate deaminase ratios that were outliers at the 1% level. This result suggests a carrier incidence of 10% in the muscle biopsy specimen population, which would markedly bias population estimates if undetected.
The dry mass of individual vaccinia virions, as an example of a presumably uniform biological population, prepared in different lost at the Institute for Tropical Hygiene in Hamburg, was tested for variability by quantitative electron microscopy. A value of 5.26 X 10(-15) g for the median weight of the particle was calculated from 7,300 determinations. By assessing the variability of polystyrene latex spheres, which were used as mass standards, we demonstrated that the variability of dry mass of vaccinia virions is fivefold greater than the variability (standard) introduced by the method for determining mass. It was concluded that while genetic control in a presumably homozygous virion is strict with respect to quality, quantity of viral components (other than DNA) varies in fashion that can be aptly described by a log-normal distribution. It is recognized that this observation is empirically supported by the paradigm that any composite biological entity is subject to quantitative variability, the more so the heavier the individual representatives of a species are. In addition, the effects that extractions and staining have on the dry mass of vaccinia are reported, as well as is the median for the dry mass of other strains of pox viruses.
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