Bats and Histoplasmosis

Abstract

It recently has been established in this laboratory that bats on the Isthmus of Panama are naturally infected with Histoplasma capsulatum (1) and that some genera are capable of shedding the fungus from intestinal lesions into their fecal contents (2). The occurrence of a febrile illness in two brothers presented the opportunity to relate natural infection in bats to human histoplasmosis. The results of epidemiologic studies designed to demonstrate this association are presented here. The techniques for soil sampling have been described elsewhere (3). They consisted of two methods: a sedimentation technique that allowed for recovery of 0.05% of