Historically, brucellosis from Brucella suis infection occurred among workers in swine slaughterhouses. In 1972, the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Brucellosis Eradication Program was expanded to cover swine herds. Subsequent elimination of brucellosis in commercial swine resulted in a decrease in B. suis-associated illness in humans. Currently, swine-associated brucellosis in humans i...

As feral swine (Sus scrofa) populations expand their range and the opportunity for feral swine hunting increases, there is increased potential for disease transmission that may impact humans, domestic swine, and wildlife. From September 2007 to March 2010, in 13 North Carolina, USA, counties and at Howell Woods Environmental Learning Center, we conducted a serosurvey of feral swine for Brucella...

The adhesion of bacterial pathogens to host cells is an event that determines infection, and ultimately invasion and intracellular multiplication. Several evidences have recently shown that this rule is also truth for the intracellular pathogen Brucella. Brucella suis displays the unipolar BmaC and BtaE adhesins, which belong to the monomeric and trimeric autotransporter (TA) families, respecti...

The aim of this study was to investigate the intra-litter infection dynamics of Isospora suis under natural conditions, and to study any association between parasite transmission and the contamination level of the farrowing pen by applying different interventions in order to reduce the transmission of I. suis infection within the litter. The study was divided in 2 trials including in total 22 l...

In pigs, Chlamydia suis has been associated with respiratory disease, diarrhea and conjunctivitis, but there is a high rate of inapparent C. suis infection found in the gastrointestinal tract of pigs. Tetracycline resistance in C. suis has been described in the USA, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Cyprus and Israel. Tetracyclines are commonly used in pig production due to their broad-spectrum acti...

In Time-Space Clustering of Human Brucellosis, California, 1973–1992, by G. Fosgate et al., an error appears in the results section. The corrected sentence appears below and online at http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol8no7/01-0351.htm . The Brucella species was identified in 229 (55%) of the 416 cases analyzed. B abortus was isolated from 39 cases, B. melitensis from 181, and B. suis from 9. We ...

Streptococcus suis is an emerging zoonotic agent of septicemia and meningitis. Knowledge on host immune responses toward S. suis and strategies used by this pathogen for subversion of these responses is scarce. Here, S. suis modulation of dendritic cell (DC) functions were assessed for the first time. Using S. suis knockout mutants in capsular polysaccharide (CPS) expression, it was shown that ...

Brucella neotomae is not known to be associated with clinical disease in any host species. Previous research suggested that B. neotomae might not express detectable levels of Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (SOD), a periplasmic enzyme known to be involved in protecting Brucella from oxidative bactericidal effects of host phagocytes. This study was undertaken to investigate the genetic basis for the ...

The routine identification and differentiation of Brucella species is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, which frequently places personnel at risk of laboratoryacquired infection. Here, we describe the development of a rapid multiplex PCR assay for the confirmation of presumptive Brucella isolates. The assay was able to identify and differentiate major human pathogens, namely B. abor...

A PCR assay was developed for the detection of Streptococcus suis serotypes 2 and 1/2. This multiplex PCR is based on the amplification of the gene coding for 16S rRNA of S. suis and on the amplification of the cps2J gene coding for the capsule of S. suis serotypes 2 and 1/2. An internal control was constructed and added in this test to monitor the efficiency of amplification in each reaction. ...