Incidence of T-strain mycoplasmas in male and female subjects attending a venereal diseases clinic.

on agar medium and have subsequently been referred to as T-strain mycoplasmas or T-mycoplasmas. Shepard (1956) noted that T-strain mycoplasmas were present in a high proportion of patients with non-gonococcal urethritis, and it was suggested that the organisms played a part in the aetiology of that disease. Because of the increasing prevalence of non-gonococcal urethritis, this hypothesis has since been investigated in several studies, in most of which the incidence of T-strain mycoplasmas was found to be higher in groups of men suffering from nongonococcal urethritis than in comparable but symptom-free control groups. Non-gonococcal urethritis has increased in New Zealand as in other countries, and for this reason it was decided to assess the incidence of T-strain mycoplasmas in groups of men and women reporting at the venereal diseases clinic of the Dunedin Hospital and in some other subjects.