Dietary zinc and the control of Streptococcus pneumoniae infection

© 2019 Eijkelkamp et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Human zinc deficiency increases susceptibility to bacterial infection. Although zinc supplementation therapies can reduce the impact of disease, the molecular basis for protection remains unclear. Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major cause of bacterial pneumonia, which is prevalent in regions of zinc deficiency. We report that dietary zinc levels dictate the outcome of S. pneumoniae infection in a murine model. Dietary zinc restriction impacts murine tissue zinc levels with distribution post-infection altered, and S. pneumoniae virulence and infection enhanced. Although the activation and infiltration of murine phagocytic cells was not affected by zinc restriction, their efficacy of bacterial control was compromised. S. pneumoniae was shown to be highly sensitive to zinc intoxication, with this process impaired in zinc restricted mice and isolated phagocytic cells. Collectively, these data show how dietary zinc deficiency increases sensitivity to S. pneumoniae infection while revealing a role for zinc as a component of host antimicrobial defences

Salmonella employs multiple mechanisms to subvert the TLR-inducible zinc-mediated antimicrobial response of human macrophages

© FASEB. We aimed to characterize antimicrobial zinc trafficking within macrophages and to determine whether the professional intramacrophage pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) subverts this pathway. Using both Escherichia coli and S. Typhimurium, we show that TLR signaling promotes the accumulation of vesicular zinc within primary human macrophages. Vesicular zinc is delivered to E. coli to promote microbial clearance, whereas S. Typhimurium evades this response via Salmonella pathogenicity island (SPI)-1. Even in the absence of SPI-1 and the zinc exporter ZntA, S. Typhimurium resists the innate immune zinc stress response, implying the existence of additional host subversion mechanisms. We also demonstrate the combinatorial antimicrobial effects of zinc and copper, a pathway that S. Typhimurium again evades. Our use of complementary tools and approaches, including confocal microscopy, direct assessment of intramacrophage bacterial zinc stress responses, specific E. coli and S. Typhimurium mutants, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy, has enabled carefully controlled characterization of this novel innate immune antimicrobial pathway. In summary, our study provides new insights at the cellular level into the well-documented effects of zinc in promoting host defense against infectious disease, as well as the complex host subversion strategies employed by S. Typhimurium to combat this pathway

Estudo dos fatores de virulência associados à formação de biofilme e agrupamento filogenético em Escherichia coli isoladas de pacientes com cistite Study on virulence factors associated with biofilm formation and phylogenetic groupings in Escherichia coli strains isolated from patients with cystitis

Amostras de Escherichia coli, isoladas de pacientes do sexo feminino com quadro clínico de cistite, foram caracterizadas quanto à presença de fatores de virulência associados à formação de biofilme e ao agrupamento filogenético. Os resultados da reação em cadeia da polimerase demonstraram que todas as amostras foram positivas para o gene fimH (fímbria do tipo1), 91 amostras foram positivas para o gene fliC (flagelina) 50 amostras positivas para o gene papC (fímbria P), 44 amostras positivas para o gene kpsMTII (cápsula) e 36 amostras positivas para o gene flu (antígeno 43). Os resultados dos ensaios de quantificação da formação de biofilme demonstraram que 44 amostras formaram biofilme em microplacas de poliestireno e 56 amostras apresentaram resultado ausente/fraco. Também confirmamos a incidência das amostras de Escherichia coli no grupo filogenético B2 e D.<br>Escherichia coli samples isolated from female patients with cystitis were characterized with regard to the presence of virulence factors associated with biofilm formation and phylogenetic groupings. Polymerase chain reaction results demonstrated that all the samples were positive for the gene fimH (type 1 fimbriae), 91 for fliC (flagellins), 50 for papC (P fimbriae), 44 for kpsMTII (capsules) and 36 for flu (antigen 43). The results from assays to quantify the biofilm formation demonstrated that 44 samples produced biofilm on polystyrene microplates and 56 samples produced weak or no biofilm. We also confirmed that Escherichia coli samples were present in phylogenetic groups B2 and D