To determine the pathological significance of the coccoid form of Helicobacter pylori, its adhesion to and induction of secretion of interleukin-8 (IL-8) by gastric epithelial (MKN45) cells were studied. By flow cytometry, the adhesion of the coccoid form to MKN45 cells was significantly lower than that of the helical form. The monoclonal antibody A20 recognising lipopolysaccharide of H. pylori...

Helicobacter pylori can transform from its normal helical bacillary morphology to a coccoid morphology. Since this coccoid form cannot be cultured in vitro, it has been speculated that it is a dormant form potentially involved in the transmission of H. pylori and in a patient's relapse after antibiotic therapy. In this study we determined the effects of aging, temperature, aerobiosis, starvatio...

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) can infect into the epithelial cell to cause benign or malignant disorders. Under stressful environment, a spiral form of H. pylori is transformed into a coccoid form. The infectivity of the coccoid form is still controversial. Since spiral forms are transformed into two types of coccoid forms via different mechanisms, the infectivity of the two types of coccoid ...

Helicobacter pylori infection affects human populations of all ages. This gastric bacterium exists in spiral form and the reported viable but nonculturable coccoid form. The present study aims to examine the probable role of the coccoid form in H. pylori infection by comparing the seroprevalences of the spiral and the coccoid forms in children with epigastric pain. Four hundred eighty-nine chil...

conclusions induction of coccoid form of p. aeruginosa may be one of the important reasons for antibiotic treatment failure; therefore, prescribed dose of antibiotics should be carefully managed to prevent increasing antibiotic resistance and coccoid bacteria induction. results all used antibiotics at sub mic concentration had capability to induce coccoid bacteria. the highest rate of induced c...

OBJECTIVES The significance of the coccoid forms of H. pylori is still controversial and the questions of whether these forms are viable and infective or degenerative are still open. We induced conversion from rod to coccoid forms and studied morphological changes and antigenic evolutions during this conversion and, thereby, elucidated the viability of coccoid forms. METHODS The H. pylori str...

Human gastric epithelial immortalized GES-1 cells were infected with spiral and coccoid Helicobacter pylori. Scanning electron microscopy was used to determine the ability of the two forms of H. pylori to adhere to GES-1 cells. GES-1 cell apoptosis induced by coccoid and spiral H. pylori was analysed using flow cytometry. A cDNA microarray for 22,000 human genes was used to identify the gene-ex...

After characterization of preferred conditions for Helicobacter pylori survival in the sessile state, it was observed that the bacterium transforms from spiral to coccoid under mild circumstances, whereas under extreme ones it is unable to undergo shape modification. This strongly supports the view that transformation into the coccoid form is an active, biologically led process, switched on by ...

Helicobacter pylori may reside in the human stomach as two morphological forms: the culturable spiral form and the viable but non-culturable (VBNC) coccoid form. This bacterium transforms from spiral to coccoid under in vitro suboptimal conditions. However, both spiral and coccoid have demonstrated its infectivity in laboratory animals, suggesting that coccoid may potentially be involved in the...