• The Journal of the Korean Society for Microbiology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.7-11
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• 1973

The authors identified eighty-eight Shigella cultures among about four thousands specimens collected from all over the country in 1972. Of eighty-eight cultures, seventy-seven cultures belonged to Shigella flexneri and eleven cultures to Shigella sonnei. None of cultures belonging to either subgroup A or C was detected in 1972. Of seventy-seven cultures of Shigella flexneri one was $B_{1b}$, fifty-six were $B_{2a}$, nine were $B_{3a}$, six were $B_{4a}$, three were By and one was each of $B_{3b}$ and $B_{3c}$. Of eleven cultures of Shigella sonnei seven cultures appeared to be phase I and the others phase II. Although there was quite a difference found in the incidence of isolating Shigella organisms between different areas as shown in Table 1, it would not be possible to understand that there might not have been the cases or carriers of Shigella in the areas where the organisms were not isolated in 1972. Concerning the biochemical properties it was not possible to compare the results obtained from the decarboxylase and dihydrolase tests with them obtained in previous years except that of lysine decarboxylase tests since they were not reported individually by the different serotypes in the previous reports. These results obtained in 1972 would be the data for the future comparison. In regards to the antibiotics-sensitivity of Shigella cultures the most of them showed sensitive results to nitrofurantoin, ampicillin, cephalosporin, gentamycin and geopen, and the majority of them appeared to be resistant to cloxacillin, tetracycline and streptomycin by means of the In Vitro tests.

• The Journal of the Korean Society for Microbiology
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.9-15
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• 1972

The authors identified 45 Shigella cultures among 63 suspectable cultures obtained from the cases showing dysentery or the like symptoms in various parts of the country during the period from February to September, 1971. Of 45 cultures, 36 cultures belonged to Subgroup B, 7 cultures to Subgroup C and 2 cultures to Subgroup D. There was none of cultures belonging to Subgroup A in 1971, although the authors detected one culture of that among 41 identified Shigella in 1967. Of 36 cultures belonging to Subgroup B, 27 cultures were $B_{2a}$ and 3 cultures of each $B_{3c},\;B_{4a}$ and $B_y$ were serotyped, respectively. Of 7 cultures beloning to Subgroup C, one was $C_{11}$ and other six cultures were $C_{15}$ and all S. boydii were isolated in Seoul area. It might be possible to suggest that there was a tendency of decreasing prevalence of S. dysenteriae and of increasing prevalence of S. boydii in Korea, although the number of cultures. tested were very much limited to conclude, if it was compared with the results obtained by the authors in 1967 that the fourty-one identified Shigella were composed of one culture of S. dysenteriae, 36 cultures of S. flexneri, 4 cultures of S. sonnei and none of S. boydii. According to the results obtained from the biochemical tests, the positive ratio of Indol tests in Subgroup B was 31/36, which could be higher than 9/36 observed in 1961, but which was nearly correlated with the result published by Ewing and his colleagues in U.S.A. The positive rates of both sorbitol and raffinose were lower than that observed by Ewing and his colleagues in S. flexneri. Regarding with the sensitivity of Shigella cultures to the antibiotics being widely used in the country, 46.2% were sensitive to chloramphenicol, which was very much higher than that observed by Park, and 85.8% were sensitive to ampicillin, which would be the drug of choice according to the results from the In Vitro tests.