Shigella flexneri is a Gram-negative, facultative intracellular pathogen that causes millions of cases of watery or bloody diarrhea annually, resulting in significant global mortality. Watery diarrhea is thought to arise in the jejunum, and subsequent bloody diarrhea occurs as a result of invasion of the colonic epithelium. Previous literature has demonstrated that Shigella encodes enterotoxins...

The superantigenic staphylococcal enterotoxins are important virulence factors and contribute to various diseases, including food poisoning and toxic shock. Dexamethasone, an anti-inflammatory agent, attenuated staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB)-induced hypothermia and serum proinflammatory cytokines and improved survival from 0% to 86% in a lethal mouse model of SEB-mediated shock.

The longus type IV pilus gene (lngA) was highly prevalent (32.8%) among Brazilian enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli strains producing both heat-labile and heat-stable enterotoxins and bearing the CFA/I, CS1CS3, or CS6 antigen. Furthermore, lngA was more often found in strains isolated from children with diarrhea than in strains isolated from children without diarrhea.

Multiplex PCR was used to investigate the presence of enterotoxins genes (sea, seb, sec, sed and see) and femA gene (specific for Staphylococcus aureus) in coagulase-positive staphylococci (CPS) isolated from cheese and meat products. From 102 CPS isolates, 91 were positive for femA, 10 for sea, 12 for sed and four for see.

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) strains were readily identified in pure and mixed cultures with nonradioactive, digoxigenin-labeled DNA probes coding for heat-labile (LTI) and heat-stable (STaI, STaII, and STb) enterotoxins. Digoxigenin-labeled ETEC fragments were more sensitive than and exhibited less nonspecific background contamination than biotinylated ETEC probes.

The morphological response of Vero cells to Escherichia coli heat-labile enterotoxin was similar to that of cholera toxin and was accompanied by increases in the intracellular level of cyclic AMP. The effects of both enterotoxins were enhanced by the presence of phosphodiesterase inhibitor and inhibited by heat or specific antisera. Accumulation of cyclic AMP preceded the morphological response.

Experiments in intact animals exposed to enterotoxins demonstrate that neurons and immune cells of the lamina propria regulate toxin-induced diarrhea and tissue damage. Clostridium difficile toxins cause profound diarrhea and acute inflammation by activating a complex cascade initiated by toxin binding to enterocyte receptors.

We obtained a draft genome sequence of Staphylococcus aureus strain S54F9, which was isolated from a chronic disseminated porcine lung abscess and used in porcine infection models. Genes coding for a number of toxins, including enterotoxins and superantigen, were demonstrated in this strain.

Staphylococcal poisoning is a common food-borne disease for which immunoassays to detect enterotoxins were developed, but these assays often lead to false diagnoses due to interferences or lack of specificity. Absolute quantitative mass spectrometry was for the first time successfully applied to an investigation of a staphylococcal outbreak due to coconut pearls.

Staphylococcus aureus is a Gram-positive bacterium that is present in the human microbiota. Nevertheless, these bacteria can be pathogenic to the humans. Due to the increasing occurrence of antibiotic-resistant S. aureus strains, new approaches to control this pathogen are necessary. The antimicrobial photodynamic inactivation (PDI) process is based in the combined use of light, oxygen, and an ...