Vibrio cholerae is a water-borne pathogen responsible for causing a toxin-mediated profuse diarrhea in humans, leading to severe dehydration and death in unattended patients. With increasing reports of antibiotic resistance in V. cholerae, there is a need for alternate interventional strategies for controlling cholera. A potential new strategy for treating infectious diseases involves targeting...

Fifty-five Escherichia coli strains belonging to enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) serogroups were examined for phenotypic and genetic factors associated with virulence. The strains were isolated in Italy from children with diarrhea and identified as EPEC by clinical laboratories using commercially available antisera. O:H serotyping showed that 35 strains (27 of O26, O111, and O128 serogroups) be...

Many enteric pathogens are equipped with multiple cell adhesion factors which are important for host tissue colonization and virulence. Y. enterocolitica, a common food-borne pathogen with invasive properties, uses the surface proteins invasin and YadA for host cell binding and entry. In this study, we demonstrate unique cell adhesion and invasion properties of Y. enterocolitica serotype O:3 st...

The Sec pathway plays a prominent role in protein export and membrane insertion, including the secretion of major bacterial virulence determinants. The accessory Sec constituent SecDF has been proposed to contribute to protein export. Deletion of Staphylococcus aureus secDF has previously been shown to reduce resistance, to alter cell separation, and to change the expression of certain virulenc...

Background: Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a versatile and opportunistic human pathogen whose virulence derives from several factors as extracellular proteases, pyocyanin and pyoverdin and biofilm formation, among others. Dexamethasone is a glucocorticoid widely used as anti-inflammatory. Despite its immunosuppressive role, the interplay between dexamethasone and bacterial virulence remains uncovere...

Type IV pili (T4P) and flagellum are well known virulence factors of an opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. T4P pili provide twitching motility, adherence to biotic/abiotic surfaces, intercellular association that is essential to biophilm formation, and are implicated in chemotaxis, bacteriophage adsorption and DNA uptake. Flagellum provides swimming/swarming motilities and chemotaxi...

K.pneumoniae is an opportunistic pathogen that causes nosocomial infections, such as, pneumonia, urinary tract infections, septic shock, and gastro intestinal disease. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), capsular polysaccharide, and fimbriae are recognized major virulence factors of K.pneumoniae and play key roles during early stages of infections. In this study, we functionalized the surface of gold ele...

Candida albicans and Candida dubliniensis are two pathogenic yeasts particularly hazardous to immunocompromised patients. Adhesion of yeast cells to epithelium is considered one of the virulence factors and its study is of major importance. The main aim of this study was the comparison of the influence of physico-chemical properties on the adhesion of C. albicans and C. dubliniensis to epitheli...

We compared the distribution of phylogenetic groups and nine virulence factors among the pathogenic (isolated from blood and urine) and commensal (isolated from feces of healthy individuals) strains of Escherichia coli, and also compared the occurrence of virulence factors according to the production of (bla)(CTX-M) among the pathogenic strains. A total of 550 non-duplicate E. coli isolates (14...