Targeting pan-resistant bacteria with antibodies to a broadly conserved surface polysaccharide expressed during infection.

Background: New therapeutic targets for antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens are desperately needed. The bacterial surface polysaccharide poly-β-(1-6)-N-acetyl-glucosamine (PNAG) mediates biofilm formation by some bacterial species, and antibodies to PNAG can confer protective immunity. By analyzing sequenced genomes, we found that potentially multidrug-resistant bacterial species such as Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterobacter cloacae, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, and the Burkholderia cepacia complex (BCC) may be able to produce PNAG.

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli in children: diagnosis and clinical manifestations of O157:H7 and non-O157:H7 infection.

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), a cause of food-borne colitis and hemolytic-uremic syndrome in children, can be serotype O157:H7 (O157) or other serotypes (non-O157). E. coli O157 can be detected by culture with sorbitol-MacConkey agar (SMAC), but non-O157 STEC cannot be detected with this medium.

High levels of antibody to panton-valentine leukocidin are not associated with resistance to Staphylococcus aureus-associated skin and soft-tissue infection.

Background: Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) expressing Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) causes severe skin and soft-tissue infection (SSTI), necrotizing pneumonia, and other invasive infections. The PVL toxin has been implicated as a virulence factor, and antibody to a component of this toxin is under investigation as a vaccine candidate. The role of PVL in pathogenesis remains controversial, and it is unknown whether human serum antibody to PVL modulates infection.

Human metapneumovirus.

Respiratory tract infections (RTI) are the leading cause of death in low-income countries and the second leading cause of death worldwide in children less than 5 years old. Most RTI are viral. Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) was discovered in 2001 in routine viral cultures of respiratory specimens from children with RTI and has been implicated as a common cause of RTI in children and adults and a cause of severe disease in immunocompromised hosts.

Association of the pneumococcal pilus with certain capsular serotypes but not with increased virulence.

The recent discovery of a mobile genetic element encoding a pilus-like structure in Streptococcus pneumoniae and the demonstration of a role for the pilus in virulence in mice have led to the proposal of the use of the pilus as a candidate pneumococcal vaccine. We examined the frequency of occurrence of the pneumococcal pilus, as determined by the presence of the rrgC gene, and analyzed its association with virulence, capsular serotypes, and multilocus sequence types in the American Indian pneumococcal collection and isolates of S. pneumoniae from blood cultures collected at Children's Hospital Boston.

Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome type 1: gene organization, novel mutations, and clinical-molecular review of non-Puerto Rican cases.

Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome (HPS) is an autosomal recessive disorder causing oculocutaneous albinism and a platelet storage pool deficiency, reflecting defective biosynthesis and/or processing of melanosomes and platelet dense bodies. Four human genes (HPS1, ADTB3A, HPS3, HPS4) are associated with four subtypes of HPS. The most common is HPS-1.