Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterial pathogen capable of causing severe infections in humans, often with fatal outcomes. Many different animal models exist to study L. monocytogenes pathogenicity, and we have investigated the chicken embryo as an infection model: What are the benefits and possible drawbacks? We have compared a defined wild-type strain with its isogenic strains lacking well-cha...

The bacterial genus Listeria contains both saprotrophic and facultative pathogenic species. A small genome size has been suggested to be associated with the loss of pathogenic potential of L. welshimeri and L. seeligeri. In this paper we present data on the genome of L. monocytogenes strain FSL J1-208, a representative of phylogenetic lineage IV. Although this strain was isolated from a clinica...

The herein presented assay provided a bacteriological and molecular characterization of 100 samples of L. monocytogenes isolated from human (43) and food (57) sources, from several regions of Brazil, and collected between 1975 and 2013. Antigenic characterization defined 49% of serotype 4b samples, followed by 28% of serotype 1/2b, 14% of serotype 1/2c, 8% of serotype 1/2a, and 1% of serotype 3...

Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) is a ubiquitous bacterium able to survive and thrive within the environment and readily colonizes a wide range of substrates, often as a biofilm. It is also a facultative intracellular pathogen, which actively invades diverse hosts and induces listeriosis. So far, these two complementary facets of Lm biology have been studied independently. Here we demonstrate that t...

Listeria monocytogenes causes listeriosis characterized by septicaemia, encephalitis, and abortion or stillbirth. Regular monitoring of its prevalence in food and characterization of its phenotypes and genotypes are necessary for disease surveillance and tracing the epidemic outbreaks. In this study, the prevalence of L. monocytogenes in raw meats marketed in Bangkok was 15.4%. The bacteria iso...

Listeria monocytogenes must resist the deleterious actions of bile in order to infect and subsequently colonize the human gastrointestinal tract. The molecular mechanisms used by the bacterium to resist bile and the influence of bile on pathogenesis are as yet largely unexplored. This study describes the analysis of three genes--bsh, pva, and btlB--previously annotated as bile-associated loci i...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW Cervicogenic headache (CHA) is a secondary headache which has a source in the upper cervical spine. Many traditional analgesic choices lack good efficacy in managing the associated pain. As a result, in management of CHA, radiofrequency ablation (RFA) or pulse radiofrequency (PRF) has been tried with success. Our study investigated the use of RFA and PRF for the management of ...