To discern virulent from innocuous microbes, the innate immune system senses events associated with bacterial access to immunoprivileged sites such as the host cell cytosol. One such pathway is triggered by the cytosolic delivery of flagellin, the major subunit of the flagellum, by bacterial secretion systems. This leads to inflammasome activation and subsequent proinflammatory cell death (pyro...

BACKGROUND Fluoroquinolones or third generation cephalosporins are the drugs of choice for the treatment of typhoid fever. Treatment failure with fluoroquinolones has been reported in Asia and Europe. We report a case of ciprofloxacin treatment failure in typhoid fever in Cameroon. CASE PRESENTATION A 29-year-old female patient with suspected typhoid fever from Kumba, Cameroon, yielded growth...

A number of bacteriophages have been identified that target the Vi capsular antigen of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi. Here we show that these Vi phages represent a remarkably diverse set of phages belonging to three phage families, including Podoviridae and Myoviridae. Genome analysis facilitated the further classification of these phages and highlighted aspects of their independent evoluti...

The MgtC is a virulence factor in Salmonella Typhimurium that is required for growth at low-Mg2+ concentrations and intramacrophage survival. This gene is codified in a conserved region of the Salmonella pathogenicity island 3 (SPI-3), and is also present in the chromosome of other Salmonella serovars. In this study we characterized the MgtC factor in S. Typhi, a human specific pathogen, by usi...

BACKGROUND Drug resistance of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (Salmonella Typhi) to first-line antibiotics is emerging in Central Africa. Although increased use of fluoroquinolones is associated with spread of resistance, Salmonella Typhi with decreased ciprofloxacin susceptibility (DCS) has rarely been reported in Central Africa. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS As part of a microbiological ...

In 1880, Karl Joseph Eberth described a bacillus that he suspected to be the cause of typhoid fever (Eberth, 1880). In 1884, the pathologist Georg Theodor August Gaffky confi rmed Eberth’s fi ndings, and the organism was named Gaffky-Eberth bacillus. At that time, it was also known that bacteria similar to Salmonella serovar Typhi could cause enteric disease in humans and farm animals. This was...

Prior to initiating a phase 1 dose escalation trial of the safety and immunogenicity of live, oral, recombinant, attenuated Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi vaccine strains in human subjects, the suitability of conventional blood culture procedures to rapidly and reliably detect the organisms in human blood was investigated. Blood culture specimens, with and without added growth supplements, w...

Many bacterial pathogens encode the cytolethal distending toxin (CDT), which causes host cells to arrest during their cell cycle by inflicting DNA damage. CDT is composed of three proteins, CdtA, CdtB, and CdtC. CdtB is the enzymatically active or A subunit, which possesses DNase I-like activity, whereas CdtA and CdtC function as heteromeric B subunits that mediate the delivery of CdtB into hos...

We present the 4.8-Mb complete genome sequence of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi strain Ty2, a human-specific pathogen causing typhoid fever. A comparison with the genome sequence of recently isolated S. enterica serovar Typhi strain CT18 showed that 29 of the 4,646 predicted genes in Ty2 are unique to this strain, while 84 genes are unique to CT18. Both genomes contain more than 200 pseudog...

High-throughput epidemiological typing systems that provide phylogenetic and genotypic information are beneficial for tracking bacterial pathogens in the field. The incidence of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi infection in Indonesia is high and is associated with atypical phenotypic traits such as expression of the j and the z66 flagellum antigens. Utilizing a high-throughput genotyping platf...