Alterations to the community structure and function of the microbiome are associated with changes to host physiology, including immune responses. However, the contribution of microbe-derived RNAs carried by outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) to host immune responses remain unclear. This study investigated the role of OMVs and OMV-associated small RNA (sRNA) species from pathogenic and commensal (ETBF and NTBF respectively) in eliciting different immune responses from intestinal epithelial cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: The family includes many obligate parasitic bacterial species etiologically associated with a myriad of zoonotic borrelioses, including Lyme disease and vector-borne relapsing fevers. infections are difficult to detect by both direct and indirect methods, often leading to delayed and missed diagnoses. Efforts to improve diagnostics center around the development of molecular diagnostics (MDx), but due to deep tissue sequestration and the lack of persistent bacteremias, even MDx assays suffer from a lack of sensitivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe discovery of profound differences in the brain microbiota of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and age-matched controls (AMCs) raised questions of postmortem contamination and bacterial transport processes which could be informed by microspatial heterogeneities. We performed semiquantitative species-specific bacterial analyses on multiple micro biopsies from each of the 30 brain specimens (AD and controls). We trimmed ~1 mm of each specimen's edges for surface contaminants and made multiple sterile biopsy punches of the resultant core of each specimen.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Bacterial vaginosis (BV) affects 20-50% of reproductive-age female patients annually, arising when opportunistic pathogens outcompete healthy vaginal flora. Many patients fail to resolve symptoms with a course of metronidazole, the current first-line treatment for BV. Our study was designed to identify genomic variation associated with metronidazole resistance among strains of Gardnerella vaginalis spp.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Infect Dis
September 2024
Sensory functions of organs of the head and neck allow humans to interact with the environment and establish social bonds. With aging, smell, taste, vision, and hearing decline. Evidence suggests that accelerated impairment in sensory abilities can reflect a shift from healthy to pathological aging, including the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other neurological disorders.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The family includes many obligate parasitic bacterial species which are etiologically associated with a myriad of zoonotic borrelioses including Lyme disease and vector-borne relapsing fevers. Infections by the are difficult to detect by both direct and indirect methods, often leading to delayed and missed diagnoses. Efforts to improve diagnoses center around the development of molecular diagnostics (MDx), but due to deep tissue sequestration of the causative spirochaetes and the lack of persistent bacteremias, even MDx assays suffer from a lack of sensitivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe causative agent of Lyme disease (LD), , binds factor H (FH) and other complement regulatory proteins to its surface. B31 (type strain) encodes five FH-binding proteins (FHBPs): CspZ, CspA, and the OspE paralogs OspE, OspE, and OspE. This study assessed potential correlations between the production of individual FHBPs, FH-binding ability, and serum resistance using a panel of infectious clonal populations recovered from dogs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Infect Dis
August 2024
Background: The critical issues of sustained memory immunity following ebolavirus disease among long-term survivors are still unclear.
Methods: Here, we examine virus-specific immune and inflammatory responses following in vitro challengd in 12 Sudan virus (SUDV) long-term survivors from Uganda's 2000-2001 Gulu outbreak, 15 years after recovery. Total RNA from isolated SUDV-stimulated and unstimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells was extracted and analyzed.
Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol
January 2024
Background: Over the last few decades, a growing body of evidence has suggested a role for various infectious agents in Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis. Despite diverse pathogens (virus, bacteria, fungi) being detected in AD subjects' brains, research has focused on individual pathogens and only a few studies investigated the hypothesis of a bacterial brain microbiome. We profiled the bacterial communities present in non-demented controls and AD subjects' brains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiofouling is a major problem in all natural and artificial settings where solid surfaces meet liquids in the presence of living microorganisms. Microbes attach to the surface and form a multidimensional slime that protects them from unfavorable environments. These structures, known as biofilms, are detrimental and very hard to remove.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrobial infections of the brain can lead to dementia, and for many decades microbial infections have been implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. However, a causal role for infection in AD remains contentious, and the lack of standardized detection methodologies has led to inconsistent detection/identification of microbes in AD brains. There is a need for a consensus methodology; the Alzheimer's Pathobiome Initiative aims to perform comparative molecular analyses of microbes in post mortem brains versus cerebrospinal fluid, blood, olfactory neuroepithelium, oral/nasopharyngeal tissue, bronchoalveolar, urinary, and gut/stool samples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Appl Bio Mater
January 2023
Since the onset of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the world has witnessed over 617 million confirmed cases and more than 6.54 million confirmed deaths, but the actual totals are likely much higher. The virus has mutated at a significantly faster rate than initially projected, and positive cases continue to surge with the emergence of ever more transmissible variants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe acceleration of climate change has been associated with an alarming increase in the prevalence and geographic range of tick-borne diseases (TBD), many of which have severe and long-lasting effects-particularly when treatment is delayed principally due to inadequate diagnostics and lack of physician suspicion. Moreover, there is a paucity of treatment options for many TBDs that are complicated by diagnostic limitations for correctly identifying the offending pathogens. This review will focus on the biology, disease pathology, and detection methodologies used for the family which includes the Lyme disease agent .
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProspective observational cohort study. To determine whether biofilms exist on spinal instrumentation recovered during revision surgery in which microbial cultures were negative. Biofilm bacteria are extremely difficult to detect by conventional culture methods used in the standard hospital setting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: To understand the role of the urinary microbiome in disease states and interpret non-culture-based diagnostic urine testing of midstream urine specimens, we must have a better understanding of the urinary microbiome in asymptomatic, healthy individuals. We examined the impact of gender, age, and menopausal status on the healthy human urinary microbiome in asymptomatic control subjects enrolled in the multi-institution National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Chronic Pelvic Pain Network (MAPP) study.
Methods: Asymptomatic, healthy controls, recruited to be ageand sex-matched to patients in the Trans-MAPP Epidemiology and Phenotyping Study, provided midstream urine collection for polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry identification of urinary microbiota.
Genet Test Mol Biomarkers
February 2022
The primary aims of this study were to determine if any correlation exists in cases of fracture fixation among: (1) bacterial profiles recovered from the instrumentation and adjacent tissues; (2) the type of orthopedic injury; and (3) the clinical outcome-union versus nonunion. A secondary goal was to compare culture and molecular diagnostics for identifying the bacterial species present following fracture fixation. Single-institution, prospective case-control cohort study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Cell Infect Microbiol
November 2021
In our community-based prospective cohort study in young children, we observed a significant increase in pneumococcal serotype 35B nasopharyngeal (NP) commensal colonization during the 2011-2014 timeframe, but these strains were not associated with disease. Beginning in 2015 and continuing through to the present, the serotype 35B virulence changed, and it became the dominant bacteria isolated and associated with pneumococcal acute otitis-media (AOM) in our cohort. We performed comparative analyses of 250 35B isolates obtained from 140 children collected between 2006 and 2019.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOutbreaks of severe and chronic tick-borne diseases (TBDs) are on the rise. This is through the transmission of infectious disease agents to humans during tick feeding. The transmission rate and extent of microbial exchange, however, vary based on the tick microbiome composition.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenetic variants arising from within-patient evolution shed light on bacterial adaptation during chronic infection. Contingency loci generate high levels of genetic variation in bacterial genomes, enabling adaptation to the stringent selective pressures exerted by the host. A significant gap in our understanding of phase-variable contingency loci is the extent of their contribution to natural infections.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To undertake the first comprehensive evaluation of the urinary microbiota associated with Hunner lesion (HL) interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS). Despite no previous identification of a distinct IC/BPS microbial urotype, HL IC/BPS, an inflammatory subtype of IC/BPS, was hypothesized most likely to be associated with a specific bacterial species or microbial pattern.
Participants And Methods: The bacterial microbiota of midstream urine specimens from HL IC/BPS and age- and gender-matched IC/BPS patients without HL (non-HL IC/BPS) were examined using the pan-bacterial domain clinical-level molecular diagnostic Pacific Biosciences full-length 16S gene sequencing protocol, informatics pipeline and database.