Cross Alan S
Center for Vaccine Development, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 685 W, Baltimore Street, HSF 1 480, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA.
Crit Care. 2008;12(6):196. doi: 10.1186/cc7127. Epub 2008 Dec 2.
Bacterial virulence factors enable a host to replicate and disseminate within a host in part by subverting or eluding host defenses. The use of genomic techniques has led to the identification of new virulence factors that may serve as targets for new therapies. These putative virulence factors must be rigorously evaluated with in vitro and in vivo studies with an awareness of the technical limitations of each approach as well as an assessment of the prevalence of this factor in clinical bacterial isolates retrieved from appropriately controlled epidemiologic studies.
细菌毒力因子能够通过破坏或逃避宿主防御机制,使病原体在宿主体内复制和传播。基因组技术的应用已促使人们鉴定出可能成为新疗法靶点的新毒力因子。这些假定的毒力因子必须通过体外和体内研究进行严格评估,同时要意识到每种方法的技术局限性,并评估从适当对照的流行病学研究中获得的临床细菌分离株中该因子的流行情况。