Intracellular killing of Brucella melitensis within mouse peritoneal macrophages: influence of treatment with rifampicin. An ultrastructural study

The aggregation and condensation of ribosomes and the disjunction of the cell-wall membranous system are the ultrastructural alterations caused by rifampicin on B. melitensis cultured in Brucella-Broth medium. Our ultrastructural researches carried out on mouse peritoneal macrophages infected with B. melitensis and treated with rifampicin (1 microgram/ml) have demonstrated that vacuoles containing B. melitensis which had been damaged by the drug fuse with lysosomes. On the contrary vacuoles containing undamaged and viable Brucellae showed markedly impaired lysosomal fusion.