Inflammatory Response of Primary Cultured Bovine Mammary Epithelial Cells to Extracellular Vesicles.

In dairy cows, () is among the most prevalent microorganisms worldwide, causing mastitis, an inflammation of the mammary gland. Production of extracellular vesicles (EVs) is a common feature of strains, which contributes to its pathogenesis by delivering bacterial effector molecules to host cells. In the current study, we evaluated the differences between five mastitis isolates regarding their EV production. We found that different mastitis-related strains differ in their behaviour of shedding EVs, with M5512VL producing the largest amount of EVs containing alpha-haemolysin, a strong cytotoxic agent. We stimulated primary cultured bovine mammary epithelial cells (pbMECs) with EVs from the strain M5512VL. After 24 h of incubation, we observed a moderate increase in gene expression of tumour necrosis factor-alpha () but, surprisingly, a lack of an associated pronounced pro-inflammatory response. Our results contribute to understanding the damaging nature of in its capacity to effectively affect mammary epithelial cells.