Section Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Laboratory of Medical Immunology, Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences.
Radboud Center for Infectious diseases, Radboudumc, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Curr Opin Infect Dis. 2020 Jun;33(3):231-237. doi: 10.1097/QCO.0000000000000645.
The human upper respiratory tract is colonized with a variety of bacterial microorganisms including Haemophilus influenzae. The species H. influenzae consists of typeable and nontypeable H. influenzae (NTHi) variants. Typeable H. influenzae are subdivided into types a through f, based on the polysaccharide capsule, whereas the NTHi strains do not express a polysaccharide capsule. In this review, we highlight the current advances in the field of H. influenzae, with the focus on bacterial virulence mechanisms that facilitate bacterial colonization and disease, particularly for NTHi.
In the past decade, it has become apparent that NTHi has the ability to cause invasive infections. Recently, a number of adhesins have been shown to be crucial for bacterial colonization and invasion and these proteins were investigated as vaccine antigens. Although NTHi lacks a polysaccharide capsule, it expresses lipooligosaccharide that contribute to adhesion and evasion of complement-mediated killing, both contributing to bacterial virulence, which could potentially be targeted by novel antimicrobial drugs or vaccines.
The unraveling of H. influenzae virulence mechanisms resulted in the identification of promising targets for novel antimicrobials and vaccine antigens aiming to prevent or treat both typeable and nontypeable H. influenzae infections.
综述目的：人类上呼吸道定植着多种细菌微生物，包括流感嗜血杆菌。流感嗜血杆菌包括有荚膜和无荚膜（NTHi）两种变异株。有荚膜的流感嗜血杆菌根据荚膜多糖可分为 a 至 f 型，而无荚膜的 NTHi 株则不表达荚膜多糖。本综述重点介绍了流感嗜血杆菌领域的最新进展，特别是针对 NTHi 的细菌毒力机制，以促进细菌定植和疾病的发生。
最近发现：在过去十年中，NTHi 具有引起侵袭性感染的能力已变得明显。最近，许多黏附素已被证明对细菌定植和入侵至关重要，这些蛋白被作为疫苗抗原进行了研究。尽管 NTHi 缺乏荚膜多糖，但它表达脂寡糖，有助于黏附和逃避补体介导的杀伤，这两者都有助于细菌毒力，这可能成为新型抗菌药物或疫苗的潜在靶点。
总结：流感嗜血杆菌毒力机制的阐明，为新型抗菌药物和疫苗抗原的开发提供了有希望的靶点，旨在预防或治疗有荚膜和无荚膜的流感嗜血杆菌感染。
