Enzootic abortion of ewes (EAE) due to infection with the obligate intracellular pathogen Chlamydia (C.) abortus is an important zoonosis leading to considerable economic loss to agriculture worldwide. The pathogen can be transmitted to humans and may lead to serious infection in pregnant women. Knowledge about epidemiology, clinical course and transmission to humans is hampered by the lack of ...

the incidence of virulence factors among 114 enterococcus faecalis and 35 enterococcus faecium strains from different clinical specimens were compared with those isolated from control groups. a few of the isolates expressed two or more of the following traits simultaneously: hemolysin, aggregation substance, gelatinase, dnase, hemagglutinin and antibiotic resistance. the frequencies of hemolysi...

The virulence mechanisms of the facultative intracellular parasite Rhodococcus equi remain largely unknown. Among the candidate virulence factors of this pathogenic actinomycete is a secreted cholesterol oxidase, a putative membrane-damaging toxin. We identified and characterized the gene encoding this enzyme, the choE monocistron. Its protein product, ChoE, is homologous to other secreted chol...

The complex relation between the genotype of Helicobacter pylori and its association with clinical outcome is not well understood. Studies in the West have showed that strains expressing certain virulence factors (vacAs1, vacAm1, and cagA) are associated with duodenal ulcer disease. However, the H. pylori genotype is known to vary with geographic region. In the present study, we compared severa...

BACKGROUND As for human trichomoniasis the host-parasite relationship is very complex, and the broad ranges of clinical symptoms are unlikely be attributable to a single pathogenic mechanism. Specific Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers of 490 bp, 720 bp and 460 bp using the primers Tv-5, OPA-6 and OPA-11, respectively, were reported. This was the first description of possible genet...

A total of 178 strains of V. parahaemolyticus isolated from 13,607 acute diarrheal patients admitted in the Infectious Diseases Hospital, Kolkata has been examined for serovar prevalence, antimicrobial susceptibility and genetic traits with reference to virulence, and clonal lineages. Clinical symptoms and stool characteristics of V. parahaemolyticus infected patients were analyzed for their sp...

BACKGROUND Whether accessory traits, phylogenetic background, or ecological source best predicts extraintestinal virulence within Escherichia coli is undefined. METHODS A total of 90 E. coli strains (18 fecal isolates and 72 extraintestinal-infection isolates) were characterized for 55 accessory traits and phylogenetic group (A, B1, B2, or D). Bacterial traits and ecological source were compa...

A number of amino acid requiring auxotrophic strains of Salmonella Typhimurium were produced by chemical mutagenesis. One of them, strain 81, was cured of the virulence plasmid and attenuated for mice. This strain had an auxotrophic requirement for serine, which could be used as a marker for the differentiation of the vaccine strain from other isolates in the field. The strain still contained t...