Diarrhoea is important in Guatemala where 7% of children aged under 10 years are carriers of Shigella [MATA et al., Bull. Hyg., 1966, v. 41, 305.] Studies are here reported of 5 children in a convalescent home and 10 in a country village who had dysentery due to 6 different Shigella types, singly, in combination, or successively. Successive faecal specimens were examined by a semi-quantitative technique to observe the fluctuations in the numbers of different kinds of intestinal bacteria during an attack of dysentery and during subsequent convalescence.

During clinical dysentery there was an increase in the number of Shigella excreted; this was a permanent feature in children with chronic recurrent shigellosis. In infections with Sh. dysenteriae, Sh. flexneri and Sh. boydii there was an inverse relation between the number of coliforms and the number of Shigella in the faeces, but this was not the case with Sh. sonnei infections which were, however, all in the convalescent-home children. In acute dysentery there were fewer streptococci than during remission and the lactobacilli were of different colonial types. Studies of serum antibodies were inconclusive. The role of coproantibodies deserves further study. M. H. Hughes.