Maternal Immunization with Pneumococcal Surface Protein A Protects against Pneumococcal Infections among Derived Offspring

Pathogen-specific antibody plays an important role in protection against pneumococcal carriage and infections. However, neonates and infants exhibit impaired innate and adaptive immune responses, which result in their high susceptibility to pneumococci. To protect neonates and infants against pneumococcal infection it is important to elicit specific protective immune responses at very young ages. In this study, we investigated the protective immunity against pneumococcal carriage, pneumonia, and sepsis induced by maternal immunization with pneumococcal surface protein A (PspA). Mother mice were intranasally immunized with recombinant PspA (rPspA) and cholera toxin B subunit (CTB) prior to being mated. Anti-PspA specific IgG, predominantly IgG1, was present at a high level in the serum and milk of immunized mothers and in the sera of their pups. The pneumococcal densities in washed nasal tissues and in lung homogenate were significantly reduced in pups delivered from and/or breast-fed by PspA-immunized mothers. Survival after fatal systemic infections with various types of pneumococci was significantly extended in the pups, which had received anti-PspA antibody via the placenta or through their milk. The current findings strongly suggest that maternal immunization with PspA is an attractive strategy against pneumococcal infections during early childhood. (191 words

Application of typing by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis to the study of Clostridium difficile in a neonatal intensive care unit

Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis of restriction pattern polymorphism was applied to type Clostridium difficile isolated from neonates hospitalized in a neonatal intensive care unit, and the results were compared with those of immunoblot analysis. C. difficile was isolated from fecal specimens of 41 (61%) of 67 neonates during a 5-month investigation. All of these neonates were asymptomatic. Fifty-five C. difficile isolates from 32 patients were analyzed by PFGE after digestion with SmaI and SacII endonucleases and by immunoblotting with 10 different antisera. Fifty-three of 55 isolates from 30 patients were identical by PFGE analysis after SmaI and SacII digestion and immunoblot analysis. Two isolates were different from each other and from the epidemic group by both PFGE and immunoblot analysis. All 53 epidemic isolates were nontoxigenic, while the two remaining isolates were toxigenic. These results suggest that nosocomial spread of nontoxigenic C. difficile infection in the neonatal intensive care unit and suggest that both PFGE and immunoblot are powerful typing tools for the epidemiological study of C. difficile.</jats:p