• The Journal of the Korean Society for Microbiology
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.191-204
• /
• 1986

Leptospira isolated from the patients with so called epidemic pulmonary hemorrhagic fever were comparatively studied with standard strains obtained from ATCC. The specific aim of this study was to clarify the morphologic heterogeneity of the isolates, i. e., coexistence of spiral forms in both handness, right and left, rod and spherical forms in their population by comparing them with those of the ATCC strains. No differences between our strains and ATCC strains were noticed in their growth characteristics, responses to the culture media, temperature, antibiotics and antifungal agents. Furthermore, the morphologic heterogeneity had been repeatedly observed even in cultures of standard ATCC strains, which had been noticed in the cultures of bacteria isolated in this laboratory. The serologic analysis of our isolates demonstrated that the bacteria reacted with L. icterohaemorrhagiae and L. australis regardless their differences in time of isolation(1984, 1985). Thus, it was concluded that the spiral bacteria isolated in this laboratory are Leptospira of a new serovar which still remained to be determined. And the previous reports on the morphology of the Leptospira, which described that the Leprospira population has only spiral forms with right. handed coils might be reconsidered.