INFECTIOUS HEPATITIS COMPLICATED BY SECONDARY INVASION WITH SALMONELLA 1

Abstract

Hepatitis has been transmitted experimentally to 23 human volunteers by oral or parenteral administration of a filtrable agent. During the course of their hepatitis, 2 of these men, who worked and lived in an institution where infections due to Salmonella spp. were endemic in fair proportion, developed a superimposed bacteremia (S. cholerae-suis). Appropriate serologic evidence of bacterial infection was present in these 2 subjects while the other volunteers (with 1 exception) showed no serologic response to several strains of Salmonella. This occurrence of bacteremia during the course of exptl. hepatitis is reminiscent of the experience in World War I when the association of infectious hepatitis and paratyphoid bacilli was common. It suggests that a virus infection of the human gastro-intestinal tract may render it more susceptible to bacterial infection and that such double infections are made possible in part by unsanitary conditions which favor the spread of both diseases.