[Ultrastructural studies of Klebsiella rhinoscleromatis]

In 1870, F. Hebra described a slowly progressing granulomatous disease of the nasal mucous membrane he called rhinoscleroma. Later, N. M. Volkovich and A. Frisch isolated from patients suffering from this disease a microorganism they termed Klebsiella rhinoscleromatis. In 1932, S. Belinov proposed to name the disease Scleroma respiratorium because the pathological process developing in rhinosclerosis may involve not only upper but also lower airways. In 1961, T. Steffen and J. Smith demonstrated that Klebsiella rhinoscleromatis conformed to Koch's postulates and was an etiological factor of inflammatory changes typical of scleroma. This paper presents results of ultrastructural examinations of Klebsiella rhinoscleromatis isolated from two patients with Scleroma respiratorium. It was shown that as the degenerative process developed, the amount of electron-dense material around the bacterial cell wall decreased progressively and only fragments of the cellular membrane remained.