Key words: Antibodies to Leptospira, Tokyo, Uveitis

Key words: Antibodies to Leptospira, Tokyo, Uveitis

Fig. 1 Distribution of Antibody Titers in Age Decade Fig. 3 Distribution of Antibody Titers in each Strain Fig. 2 Correlation between Antibody Titers and Sex Distribution Fig. 4 Distribution of 25 Cases, which Indicate Cross Reaction

Table 1 Distribution of Antibody Titers in Each Examined Area Table 2 Correlation between Eye Symptoms and Positive Antibody Titers

Fig. 5 Distribution chart showing positive Leptospira Agglutination (over 1: 80), in habitants at Tokyo and its suburbs. indicate positive L.icterohaemorrhagiae indicate positive other.strains indicate mixed infection indicate negative 1. Saitama Prefecture 2. Kanagawa Prefecture 3. Tiba Prefecture 4. Tokyo Bay 5. Shinjuku ward 6. Suginami ward 7. Toshima Ward 8. Nerima Ward 9. Shibuya Ward 10. Setagaya Ward 11. Edogawa Ward

Table 3 Distribution of Leptospira Infection in Japan (from Literatuie) W: L. icterohaemorrhagiae A: L. autumnalis B: L hebdomadis C: L. australis Ca: L. canicola Cases infected with more than two Leptospira strains, treated as superinfection, are added in numbers so the number of positive samples were higher than number of cases.,

Distribution of Antibodies to Leptospires in Tokyo and its suburbs Fuka OSADA and Shintaro KOBAYASHI Central Clinical Laboratory, Toky Womens Medical College Mitsuko KOGURE Ophthalmology, Tokyo Women's Medical College A total of 221 inhabitants in Tokyo and its suburbs was tested for Leptospira agglutination titer, and the followings were found: 1) If 1: 80 and higher titers were defined as positive, the rate of positive Leptospira reaction was 16.3% in the inhabitants in Tokyo and its suburbs. 2) The rate of positive Leptospira reaction was higher with age, and the higher the age, the larger was the number of specimens with high antibody titers. 3) The rate of positive reaction was 11 % in male subjects, and 21.5% in females. 4) When the subjects with positive reaction were classified by the strains of Leptospira, the positive rate with L. icterohaemorrhagiae was the highest, followed by that with L. australis and L. hebdomadis. In addition, there were one subjects with positive L. autumnalis and another with positive L. canicola. The latter was suspected of cross reaction with L. icterohaemorrhagiae. There were two subjects who were suspected of superinfection with two to three Leptospira strains. 5) The positive rate of 33.3% observed in Saitama Prefecture was the highest among Tokyo and its suburbs, followed by 15.1% in the 23 wards of Tokyo (the old city of Tokyo), 12.5% in the other areas of Tokyo, and 8.3% in Kanagawa Prefecture. It was in Suginami Ward that the highest positive rate was observed among the 23 wards of Tokyo, followed by the rates in Shibuya, Shinjuku,Toshima, Edogawa, Nerima and Setagaya Wards in the said sequence. 6) A total of 179 patients of endophthalmitis of unknown causes was tested for Leptospira agglutination. However, no characteristic eye symptoms which were common with patients with positive Leptospira agglutination titer were found. No specificity was observed in the eye symptoms classified by Leptospira strains. 7) In view of the facts that the positive subjects had no past history of definite Leptospira infection, that when the subjects were classified by occupation, housewives accounted for the majority, and that the rate of positive subjects was higher with age, it was surmised that the route of Leptospira infection in urban inhabitants would be somewhat different from that in rural districts.