Microbial strategies to prevent oxygen-dependent killing by phagocytes.

Microorganisms which are taken up by professional phagocytic cells of a host organism (e.g., by macrophages and polymorphonuclear leukocytes) encounter a series of antimicrobial events including confrontation with toxic oxygen species, derived mainly from the superoxide radical produced by phagocytic NADPH oxidase after uptake of the microorganism. Many microbes are susceptible to the oxygen-dependent phagocytic stress and are efficiently killed. The strategies of some microorganisms to bypass an encounter with the phagocytes' reactive oxygen species, and biochemical systems contributing to the microbes' resistance to killing by reactive oxygen species are outlined.