A case of disseminated cryptococcosis was proved by histology and cultivation. Cryptococci in tissue were rather polymorphous: spherical (3–6.5 μm), a bit oval or conspicuously elongated (2.5–4.5 × 5–8.5 μm), dumbbell-, roll-, and rod-shaped (2–2.2 × 4.5–6 μm). Some of them had a weak capsule less than 1 μm in thickness. Cultivated colonies grew glossy and smooth as well as dull and rough. Crude preparations made from the fuzzy border of rough colonies showed a pseudomycelium up to 50 μm long. About 30 preceding Czechoslovak cases of cryptococcosis were reviewed starting from 1954. But one of them was akin in histology to the present case; in another one, there was a rudimentary pseudomycelium in tissue. Literature concerning an atypical shape of cryptococci was commented.
Fragner P., Miřejovský P. (1983): Unusual shape of cryptococci in human tissue and in culture. A case of disseminated infection with a survey of cryptococcosis in ČSSR. – Česká Mykologie 37(1): 35–41.
