[Interaction of cholera vibrios and escherichiae with the intestinal epithelium (histologic and electron microscopic...

Histological and electron-microscopic investigations were carried out of ligated small intestinal loops of 147 rabbits within 24 hours after challenge with cholera vibrios El Tor, different enterotoxigenic E. coli, choleragen and E. coli enterotoxins. These ogranisms attached themselves to enterocytes and multiplied on the surface of the unaltered intestinal epithelium. Thereafter, a greatly pronounced secretion of enterocytes, rather than inflammation, developed, like after the exposure to sterile enterotoxins of E. coli and choleragen, the lumen of isolated rabbit gut loops was overfilled with great amount of fluid discharged. At later period dystrophic alterations in enterocytes also appeared. They were partly associated with excessive secretion, but the severest of them (including even necrotic foci) were caused by the compression of the isolated gut loops epithelium with fluid. The first and obligatory stage of pathogenesis of cholera and cholera-like escherichioses was apparently the attachment of the causative agent to enterocytes and its multiplication on the intestinal epithelium surface, followed by hypersecretion induced by enterotoxin effect.