Rytkönen Anne, Albiger Barbara, Hansson-Palo Paola, Källström Helena, Olcén Per, Fredlund Hans, Jonsson Ann-Beth
Microbiology and Tumor Biology Center, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
J Infect Dis. 2004 Feb 1;189(3):402-9. doi: 10.1086/381271. Epub 2004 Jan 20.
Neisseria meningitidis colonizes the upper respiratory tract (URT), enters the blood stream, and reaches the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). In the present study, we show that bacteria isolated from the URT adhere better to human epithelial cells, compared with bacteria from blood or CSF, which suggests that important changes of virulence-associated proteins take place during bacterial dissemination. Phase variation in the pilus adhesin PilC and sequence variation in the pilus subunit PilE occurred among strains from 1 patient. Changes were not found in the invasion-associated opacity proteins or in lipooligosaccharides. PilC was frequently expressed in serogroup B strains and in URT strains but was often switched off in other serogroups and in CSF strains. Strains lacking PilC showed impaired adhesion to epithelial cells. These data argue that N. meningitidis undergoes PilC phase variation and PilE sequence variation during invasive disease.
脑膜炎奈瑟菌定殖于上呼吸道（URT），进入血流，并到达脑脊液（CSF）。在本研究中，我们发现，与从血液或脑脊液中分离出的细菌相比，从URT分离出的细菌对人上皮细胞的粘附性更好，这表明在细菌传播过程中，与毒力相关的蛋白质发生了重要变化。来自1名患者的菌株中发生了菌毛粘附素PilC的相变和菌毛亚基PilE的序列变异。在与侵袭相关的不透明蛋白或脂寡糖中未发现变化。PilC在B血清群菌株和URT菌株中经常表达，但在其他血清群和脑脊液菌株中常被关闭。缺乏PilC的菌株对上皮细胞的粘附能力受损。这些数据表明，脑膜炎奈瑟菌在侵袭性疾病过程中会发生PilC相变和PilE序列变异。
