Chronic leucocytoclastic bacterial vitritis. A lymphocyte transmission electron microscopic study.

Ultrastructurally unique and distinctive non-cultivable human and mouse uveitis and vitritis producing bacteria (B) that parasitise, differentiate into both cell walled and cell wall deficient variants within, and destroy polymorphonuclear leucocytes (PMNL) were recently reported to be commonly present in the vitreous of chronic idiopathic vitritis patients. In this transmission electron microscopic restudy of the lymphocytes in 8 human and 3 mouse chronically inflamed ocular specimens, all of which had demonstrated those B within PMNL, in each specimen about 3-15% were larger atypical variants and 0.5-1.0% also harbored those B. The earliest detectable B, the 0.005-0.010 micron spherical elemental particles, had a paranuclear cytoskeletal location, where they produced cytoskeletal lysis and nuclear envelope and chromatin lesions. From that site the elemental particles proliferated, elongated, branched, and enlarged into tightly coiled 0.03-0.05 micron in diameter cell wall deficient tubules and elaborated ultrastructurally distinctive 0.5-0.7 micron cell walled B, eventually replacing the cytoskeleton and destroying the lymphocyte.