Enteropathogenicity of plesiomonas shigelloides by oral inoculation in adult conditioned rabbits

To study presumptive diarrhoeagenic and invasive properties of Plesiomonas shigelloides, adult conditioned rabbits (n = 75) were fed 10(10) CFU of 3 isolates (2 from diarrhoea patients and one from river water) of the organism, and one isolate of Shigella sonnei (from a dysentery patient as positive control) or brain-heart infusion broth (as negative control). Each rabbit received in succession i.v. cimetidine (50 mg/kg body weight), two 15 ml oral doses of 5% NaHCO3 at 15 and 30 minutes respectively, prompt bacterial or sham inoculum followed 30 minutes by 2 ml of i.p. tincture of opium. Rabbits fed with P. shigelloides did not die or develop diarrhoea, but in a majority of them, histopathological examinations of the intestine revealed mild acute inflammation of the mucosa, mainly in the ileum. There was no serum antibody response by indirect haemagglutination against the lipopolysaccharide of the homologous strains of P. shigelloides. The culture filtrates of the organism also did not show any cytotoxic morphological changes on CHO and Y1 adrenal cell cultures. By contrast, rabbits fed with S. sonnei developed clinical diarrhoea, small to widespread severe acute inflammation of the gut mucosa, and all died on day 7. It may be concluded that P. shigelloides are able to provoke a mild inflammatory lesions of the gut mucosa in this rabbit model; but there is little prospect of using this model to assess easily the virulence of the organism.