Rapid decay of Salmonella flagella antibodies during human gastroenteritis: A follow up study
Introduction
In Denmark, infections by Salmonella enteritidis or Salmonella typhimurium are the second and third most common cause of bacterial gastrointestinal infections, with Campylobacter being the most common cause (Anonymous, 2003).
At such gastrointestinal infections with Salmonella, the symptoms are diarrhea, vomiting, fever and abdominal pain; all of which commonly occur within 48 h after ingestion of the bacteria. The most common vectors of infection are meat, dairy products, poultry and eggs (Anonymous, 2003, Hohmann, 2001, Santos et al., 2001). At suspicion of infection with Salmonella, diagnosis is done by fecal or blood-culturing and/or detection of specific antibodies.
Flagella are hair like structures scattered on the surface of the Salmonella cell and the use of flagella-antigens in agglutination assays or ELISAs for detection of human typhoid fever (Shukla et al., 1997, Parry et al., 1999, Jesudason et al., 1998, Frimpong et al., 2000) and non-typhoid salmonellosis in chickens and livestock (Timoney et al., 1990, Gast and Holt, 2001, Yap et al., 2001, Feberwee et al., 2001, Veling et al., 2001) is a frequently used procedure. However, the present study is the first to employ flagella-antigens in an ELISA to investigate the magnitude and timeline of the human antibody-response against Salmonella-flagella at non-typhoid salmonellosis.
The antibody-response against Salmonella flagella is generally believed to be long-lasting (Parry et al., 1999, Frimpong et al., 2000, Willke et al., 2002, Schroeder, 1968), and a flagella-based ELISA might therefore be a means of post-infection diagnostics. But, as presented below, this hypothesis is questionable.
Section snippets
Patients
Sera from 303 Danish patients with gastroenteritis diagnosed by fecal culturing with infection by either S. enteritidis (153 patients) or S. typhimurium (150 patients) were available from a previous study. According to the laboratory-based national surveillance data for gastrointestinal infections, none of these patients were notified as having suffered from gastroenteritis within the previous year. All patients were asked to deliver a blood-sample shortly after the time of diagnosis, as well
Quality of antigens
SDS-PAGE analyses of the purified S. godesberg and S. mgulani antigens revealed two distinct fragments for both as well as a few vague fragments (Fig. 1). This has also been observed by others (Iankov et al., 2002, Chart et al., 2002, Timoney et al., 1990, Zamora et al., 1999, Ibrahim et al., 1985, Chart et al., 1997, Sbrogio-Almeida and Ferreira, 2001). For the S. godesberg flagellin, the two distinct fragments as well as one of the vague fragments were analysed by mass spectrometry,
Discussion
Patients suffering from infections with either S. enteritidis or S. typhimurium were found to produce detectable antibodies against the Salmonella flagella when their sera were analysed by ELISA. At approximately one month after onset of salmonellosis symptoms, 70% of the S. enteritidis patients were found positive for the presence of H:[g,m] antibodies, and 77% of the S. typhimurium were likewise found positive for the presence of H:[i:1,2] antibodies—in comparison, the sensitivities obtained
Acknowledgements
This study was partially supported by the Ministry of Food Agriculture and Fisheries, Directorate for Food Fisheries and Agro Business (FØS100-SSI-7).
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