"T" strain mycoplasma in the female uro-genital tract.

There is at present little agreement about the significance of the "T" strain mycoplasma in genito-urinary infections. Workers who have studied the problem have expressed opinions which vary from its confident indictment as a cause of "nonspecific urethritis" to its dismissal as simple evidence of promiscuity or as completely irrelevant. Shepard (1956) and Shepard, Lunceford, and Campbell (1964) suggested that "T" strain mycoplasma may be an aetiological agent in nongonococcal urethritis. This view seems to be supported by findings of Csonka, Williams, and Corse (1966), who isolated this organism from 70 per cent. of males with non-specific urethritis, but from only 13 per cent. of normal males; these workers also isolated the organism from urine in 65 per cent. of a group of pregnant women. The opposite view was put forward by Ingham, Macfarlane, Hale, Selkon, and Codd (1966), who looked for "T" strain mycoplasma in males with acute gonorrhoea and with non-specific urethritis and in normal controls, and failed to show any statistically significant difference between the findings in the three groups. These variations may be due to differences in cultural techniques or, as Ingham and others (1966) suggested, to differences in age or social class between the patients and controls. Shepard (1966) suggested that the prevalence of "T" strain mycoplasma in the female genital tract may be related to the frequency of sexual intercourse. The present study was undertaken to see if this was so.