Gonorrhoea in the chimpanzee. Infection with laboratory-passed gonococci and by natural transmission.

Recent studies at this laboratory have shown that the male chimpanzee can develop gonococcal urethritis after the intra-urethral inoculation of human urethral exudate containing Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Lucas, Chandler, Martin, and Schmale, 1971). Other workers (Kellogg, Cohen, Norins, Schroeter, and Reising, 1968) were able to show that the Type 1 colonies of N. gonorrhoeae (strain F-62) were still virulent for male volunteers after 720 selective transfers in vitro. It seemed of interest to determine whether gonococci passed in vitro were able to infect the chimpanzee. We report here infection by organisms selectively passed six times in vitro, and we also describe natural transmission of gonorrhoea from male to female chimpanzee.