Comparative pathogenicity of Candida albicans for mice and rabbits.

The early studies of Redaelli (1924) and Benham (1931) have shown that the rabbit is readily susceptible to infection produced by the intravenous inoculation of Candida albicans. The mouse was considered to be resistant to disease by this yeast. This concept was apparently based upon the fact that mice are resistant to infection following intraabdominal injection; however, rabbits also are resistant by this route of inoculation. More recent studies have shown that the mouse is also susceptible to the intravenous injection of C. albicans. Solotorovsky et al. (1954) used intravenously infected mice for the study of antifungal agents. The results of Mankowski (1957) also demonstrated the susceptibility of mice to C. albicans by this route. Fuentes et al. (1952) studied the symptomatology, survival time, and pathology in guinea pigs, mice, rabbits, and rats injected intravenously with numbers of C. albicans cells varying according to the weight of the animals. Since the mouse offers definite advantages over the rabbit for laboratory studies, this investigation was undertaken to determine the comparative pathogenicity of C. albicans in the Swiss white mouse and the albino rabbit on a weight for weight basis.