Quantitative detection of intracellular bacteria of the genus Chlamydia by the standard cell culture method is cumbersome and operator dependent. As an alternative, we adapted hot-start PCR to the glass capillary quantitative PCR format of the LightCycler. The optimized PCR was consistently more efficient than commercially available pre-assembled PCRs. Detection by quantitative PCR of as few as...

Chlamydia psittaci is prevalent in broiler chicken production. However, the role of C. psittaci in the respiratory disease complex needs to be clarified. Our aim was to identify the time point when a C. psittaci infection appeared on a broiler farm and to examine the presence of other respiratory pathogens at that time. We focused on the 'major' respiratory pathogens occurring in Belgian broile...

During a study on Trypanosoma equiperdum propagation in adult male Wistar rats, four rats died spontaneously. Two of the dead animals were subjected to post mortem examination. From different organs of the rats, chlamydiae were isolated and confirmed by PCR and DNA sequencing as Chlamydophila psittaci. The results show that infection with Chlamydophila psittaci may occur in laboratory rats. Suc...

Chlamydia are absolute pathogens of humans and animals; despite being rather well recognised, they are still open for discovery. One such discovery is the occurrence of extrachromosomal carriers of genetic information. In prokaryotes, such carriers include plasmids and bacteriophages, which are present only among some Chlamydia species. Plasmids were found exclusively in Chlamydia (C.) trachoma...

BACKGROUND This study was conducted to detect microbial pathogens in conjunctival mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma specimens in an attempt to determine possible associations between conjunctival MALT lymphoma and microbial infections. MATERIAL/METHODS Using PCR technique, freshly obtained tumor specimens from 16 cases of conjunctival MALT lymphoma, as confirmed by postoperati...

Among the many theories of the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis has been a possible role for infection. However, the possibility that a viral infection initiates or perpetuates damage to the arterial wall has received less attention than other more widely recognized risk factors. Recently, a newly described Chlamydia species, Chlamydia pneumoniae, strain TWAR,' has been associated with atheroscl...

South America presents the greatest Psittacidae diversity in world, but also has highest numbers of threatened parrot species. Recently, exotic viruses have been detected captive native psittacine birds Brazil, however, their impacts on health wild parrots are still unknown. We evaluated presence Chlamydia psittaci, Psittacid alphaherpesvirus 1 (PsHV-1), avipoxvirus and beak feather disease vir...

Concentrations of 20 mug of sulfadiazine or 30 mug of d-cycloserine/ml were found to be suitable for testing the differential susceptibility of Chlamydia trachomatis and C. psittaci to these drugs in cell cultures.

The in vitro susceptibility of 14 European Chlamydia psittaci strains from turkeys to the antibiotics doxycycline and enrofloxacin was tested. For doxycycline the MIC ranged from 0.05 to 0.2 microg/ml, with an average of 0.1 microg/ml. For enrofloxacin the MIC was 0.25 microg/ml. Acquired resistance was not detected against doxycycline and enrofloxacin.

Chlamydia psittaci (C. psittaci) is an obligate intracellular zoonotic pathogen that can be transmitted to humans from birds. No efficacious commercial vaccine is available for clearing chlamydial infection due to lack of potential vaccine candidates and effective delivery vehicles. Herpesvirus of turkeys (HVT) is an efficacious commercially available vaccine against Marek's Disease virus (MDV)...