A 51-year-old Caucasian woman with Listeria monocytogenes meningitis was treated and discharged after an uncomplicated course. Her medical history included immunosuppressive treatment with prednisolone and azathioprine for autoimmune hepatitis. A diagnostic work-up after the meningitis episode revealed that she had low levels of the IgG4 subclass. To our knowledge, this is the first case report...

Cross-presentation is now recognized as a major mechanism for initiating CD8 T cell responses to virus and tumor antigens in vivo. It provides an elegant mechanism that allows relatively few Dendritic cells (DCs) to initiate primary immune responses while avoiding the consumptive nature of pathogenic infection. CD8 T cells play a major role in anti-bacterial immune responses; however, the contr...

Members of the genus Listeria are fastidious bacteria with respect to their nutritional requirements, and several minimal media described in the literature fail to support growth of all Listeria spp. Furthermore, strict limitation by a single nutrient, e.g., the carbon source, has not been demonstrated for any of the published minimal media. This is an important prerequisite for defined studies...

Microglia, the innate immune cells of the brain, plays a central role in cerebral listeriosis. Here, we present evidence that microglia control Listeria infection differently than macrophages. Infection of primary microglial cultures and murine cell lines with Listeria resulted in a dual function of the two gene expression programmes involved in early and late immune responses in macrophages. W...

Listeria monocytogenes is widely used as a model to study immune responses against intracellular bacteria. It has been shown that neutrophils and macrophages play an important role to restrict bacterial replication in the early phase of primary infection in mice, and that the cytokines interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) are essential for protection. However...

The objective of this study was to isolation and characterization of Listeria species and determines Listeria monocytogenes serotypes in fresh fish, shrimp, crab and lobster in Isfahan and Shahrekord, Iran. From September 2010 to April 2011, a total of 300 samples of fresh fish, shrimp, crab and lobster were obtained from randomly selected retail stores in Isfahan and Shahreko...

Listeria monocytogenes is a gram positive, facultative intracellular pathogen with the capacity to cause food poisoning outbreaks as well as severe illness in vulnerable human population groups. It can cause a rare but serious disease called listeriosis with high fatality rates (20–30%) compared with other foodborne microbial pathogens. Although Listeria monocytogenes is infective to all human ...