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On the skin, the resident flora may play an important role for the prevention of both colonization by pathogenic bacteria and possible diseases through their bacterial interference. The common resident flora of human skin are anaerobic diphtheroid bacilli such as Propionibacterium acnes(Corynebacterium parvum), P. granulosum and P. avidum. Of these species, P. acnes is the predominant resident flora and plays a major role for the enhancement of host’s cell-mediated immunity. Particularly, the "Corynebacteriuni parvum vaccines" are often applied as bacterial adjuvant in tumorimmunotherapy. At the present time, the strains of P. acnes are devided into two types, type Ⅰ and type Ⅱ, on the basis of type specific cell wall antigens, and the"C. parvum vaccine" strains are similar to type Ⅱ in their morphology and biological properties. This finding suggests that the higher frequency of presence of type Ⅱ of P. acnes over type Ⅰ on the skin may be more beneficial for the enhancement of the cellular immunity and may result in augmenting the host immunity, against tumor development. However, the distribution of the types of P. acnes on the human skin has not been clarified. In this study, an attempt was made to survey. the distribution of the types of P. acnes in the same individuals and the types of 188 isolates from normal human skin were studied by agglutination test. Of 188 isolates, 119 strains(63.3%) belonged to type Ⅰ, 36 strains (19.2%) were type Ⅱ and 43 strains(17.6%) were not typable. Individuals may be devided into three groups according to the distribution of types; i.e., group Ⅰ was predominat with P. acnes type Ⅰ, group Ⅱ was predominant with P. acnes type Ⅱ and group Ⅲ was predominant with not-agglutinating propionibaceria to both type speiefic sera.
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