A case of human spontaneous infestation with Achorion gallinae (Mégnin-Sabrazês, 1890-93)

Abstract

Being extremely rare the spontaneous human infestation by the Achorion gallinae, the author thought it might be interesting the publishing of a case observed by him. The patient, a girl 8 years old, had the habit of playing with chickens, bringing them in contact with the face. She went to the author's Clinic with a circinated herps of the glabrous skin of the left malar region. The microscopic examination of the scales showed mycelian filaments and the culture proved it to be the A. gallinae. Although the cultures were absolutely typical, there not lacking, in those left in the oven at 30°C, plenty of rosy pigment impregnating the culture medium and imparting to it the strawberry gelly aspect, the author decided, nevertheless, to produce all the proves for the sure identification of the A. gallinae. The work deals with: the macroscopic development of the cultures in several media (Sabouraud with maltose or glucose, potatoes either simple or with glicerin and conservation medium); the observations of the development of the strawberry rosy pigment in the cultures kept in the oven; the mycological study of the fungus cultivated on slides which showed its differentiated organs; the experimental study, by the inoculations into poultry and human beings, which gave typical lesions of the avian forms and human epidermomycosis and from which new cultures of A. gallinae were easely obtained ; the histological examinations of the experimental lesions with demonstrations of microscopic scutula between the horny layers of the epiderm. Next are cited the few foreign works met with in the medical litterature about the human infestation by the A. qallinae. Since in Brazil, it is atributed to Silva Araujo (father) the reporting of a case of spontaneous human afection by the avian favus, the author closely analyses Silva Araujo's work and concluds that there are not in such work the proofs to enable one to say that the dermatosis - the human as well as the avian referred to in that work, might be identified to those due to A. gallinae or any other fungus