Antigen-specific serotyping of Neisseria gonorrhoeae: characterization based upon principal outer membrane protein.

Principal outer membrane protein (protein I) of Neisseria gonorrhoeae was prepared nearly free of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and substantially purified from other membrane proteins by chromatography of partially purified gonococcal outer membranes over Sepharose 6B in the presence of deoxycholate at pH 9.0. This protein I of nine separate antigenic types was coated to polystyrene tubes and used in the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to measure antibody to protein I or in inhibition tests to quantitate protein I antigen. No significant inhibition of the ELISA test was produced by purified LPS from the strain used to prepare each of the protein I types or by whole gonococci bearing the same LPS but different protein I antigens as the strain used to produce a given protein I antigen. Of 125 strains of gonococci used as whole organisms to inhibit the protein I ELISA, 124 (99%) typed with one or more of the nine protein I types, and 35% of these typed with a single protein I serotype. Sixty-one of 65 (94%) strains from Seattle and Atlanta patients with disseminated gonococcal infection contained protein I serotype 1, and 16 of 24 (64%) strains from Seattle patients with salpingitis bore one or both of protein I serotypes 1 and 2.