Can pseudomonas infection in experimental animals mimic Kawasaki's disease?

Experiments aimed at producing a model of Kawasaki's disease by injecting animals intraperitoneally with Pseudomonas bacilli are described. Injection of large numbers of bacilli into mice caused rapidly fatal sepsis. With appropriate numbers of organisms, some mice died within 3 days, most remained healthy, while in some an inapparent chronic disease developed. Positive blood cultures were occasionally obtained 4-17 weeks after the slow infection. An alcohol-precipitable polysaccharide, which could be measured by Roe's procedure for levan, was found in 20% of the experimentally infected mice. We suggest that this substance was partly responsible for the course of the infection. Severe vasculitis with little acute inflammatory reaction and carditis with coronary aneurysms were often obtained by injecting mice and guinea-pigs with supraliminal doses of bacilli at the same time as their immune system was impaired by treatment with either nitrogen-mustard or cyclophosphamide. We suggest that pseudomonas infection in immunologically deficient animals may mimic Kawasaki's disease and that a similar mechanism may operate in the natural form of the disease in children.