Purification and antigenic detection of O-specific polysaccharides of serovar Paratyphi A isolate from Pakistan: an emerging threat.

Background: Paratyphoid fever caused by serovar Paratyphi A is becoming a serious health problem in Asian countries particularly Pakistan, China and India and situation is aggravated by current unavailability of a licensed vaccine. This study was designed to purify the O-specific polysaccharides (OSP) produced by an isolate of Paratyphi A from Pakistan and detect antigenicity of extracted lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and purified OSP pioneerly in South Asian region as candidate for conjugate vaccine preparation.

Results: . Paratyphi A isolates were identified through PCR using primers of - gene (329 bp) and confirmed via nested PCR using -nested primers (289 bp). Yield of the LPS of . Paratyphi A isolate was 40 mg/L of the bacterial culture using hot phenol method. The purified LPS revealed the characteristic ladder like pattern of . Paratyphi A LPS on SDS-PAGE with silver staining. Purified OSP obtained by acid hydrolysis yielded 23 mg/L of culture broth and was not detected by silver staining. Antigenic interaction of the purified LPS and OSP with hyper immune mice sera was confirmed by single precipitin line evaluated through immunodiffusion assay. The antigenicity was found well intact.

Conclusions: The purified antigenic OSP from Paratyphi A may have the potential to be coupled with a carrier protein to develop low cost conjugate vaccine candidates against Paratyphi A in paratyphoid endemic regions.