Corneal ulceration secondary to intestinal Shigella sonnei.

A 34-month-old boy had a corneal ulcer due to Shigella sonnei. To my knowledge, this is the first documented case reported where the same organism was recovered from the stool. One other case of S sonnei and two cases of S flexneri corneal ulcers have appeared in the literature. All cases have been in young black boys between the ages of 23 months and 6 years. The exact pathogenesis remains unclear, but direct fecalocular inoculation into a preexisting epithelial defect, a probable herpetic dendrite in this case, is most likely.