The role of mucin on experimental Pseudomonas keratitis in rabbits.

The role of mucin in the manifestation of Pseudomonas keratitis was studied. Pseudomonas was cultivated in solutions of mucin, in which it grew rapidly and then inoculated into rabbit cornea by needle pricks. When the organism was inoculated as a suspension in saline, infection infrequently occurred as small ring abscesses of short duration around a few sites of inoculation. When the organism was inoculated as a suspension in a solution of gastric mucin, infection was usually observed as severe hypopyon-keratitis with formation of a huge ring abscess. Corneal perforation and panophthalmitis resulted in some cases. It was thus concluded that the pathogenicity of Pseudomonas is definitely increased when it was inoculated into the cornea with mucin solution.