OBJECTIVE This study aims to investigate the characters of pregnant women and neonates with listeria monocytogenes infections (L. monocytogenes) in Shandong of China. METHOD Pregnant women with premature delivery or prenatal fever were recruited in 2013. Bacterial culture was performed for the umbilical cord blood and placental swab after delivery. The strains isolated were then analyzed for ...

Listeria monocytogenes invasion of human brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMEC) and its role as a stimulus for endothelial cell activation were studied. Binding and invasion of intact BMEC monolayers were independent of the L. monocytogenes inlAB invasion locus. Cytochalasin D abrogated invasion of BMEC, whereas genistein effected only a 53% decrease in invasion, indicating a requirement ...

BACKGROUND Ciliated ependymal cells line the cerebral ventricles and aqueducts separating the infected CSF from the brain parenchyma in meningitis. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Investigation of the interaction of Listeria monocytogenes with cultured rat brain ependymal cells showed that certain strains reduced the beat frequency of the cilia but all the strains studied significantly reduced the ciliary...

Listeriosis is a severe food borne disease with mortality rate of up to 30% caused by pathogenic Listeria monocytogenes via the production several virulence factors including listeriolysin O (LLO), transcriptional activator (PrfA), actin (Act), internalin (Int), etc. It foodborne predominantly causing infections through consumption contaminated and often associated ready-to-eat (RTE) dairy prod...

Listeria monocytogenes is a ubiquitous, opportunistic pathogenic organism. Environmental adaptation requires constant regulation of gene expression. Among transcriptional regulators, AgrA is part of an auto-induction system. Temperature is an environmental cue critical for in vivo adaptation. In order to investigate how temperature may affect AgrA-dependent transcription, we compared the transc...

The emerging development of antibiotic resistant bacteria calls for novel types of antibacterial agents. In this work we examined the putative antibacterial effect of purine analogs in Listeria monocytogenes. We show that, among several tested purine analogs, only 6-N-hydroxylaminopurine (6-N-HAP) reduces the viability of the Gram-positive pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. As in Bacillus subtili...