Addition of Shiga toxin 2 to human bone marrow or cord blood cell culture induced macrophage-granulocyte colonies. Although Shiga toxin 2 alone induced colonies mainly composed of macrophages, it induced colonies mainly consisting of granulocytes when combined with physiological doses of interleukin-1beta, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, or stem cell factor with interleukin-3.

Escherichia coli strains isolated from patients with diarrhea or hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) at Pusan University Hospital, South Korea, between 1990 and 1996 were examined for traits of the O157:H7 serogroup. One strain isolated from a patient with HUS belonged to the O157:H7 serotype, possessed a 60-MDa plasmid, the eae gene, and ability to produce Shiga toxin 1 but not Shiga toxin 2. Arbi...

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) are important enteric pathogens worldwide, causing diarrhea with or without blood visibly present and hemolytic uremic syndrome. STEC are unique among diarrheogenic E coli in producing Shiga toxin type 1 and type 2, the virulence factors responsible for bloody diarrhea and hemolytic uremic syndrome. Cattle and other ruminants are the natural reservo...

The presence of commensal flora reduced colonization of Escherichia coli O157:H7 and production of Shiga toxin (Stx) in the murine intestine. Stx production was not detected in mice colonized with E. coli that were resistant to the Shiga toxin phage, but it was detected in mice colonized with phage-susceptible E. coli.

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) may cause bloody diarrhea and hemorrhagic colitis (HC), with subsequent systemic disease. Since genes coding for Shiga toxins (stx genes) are located on lambdoid prophages, their effective production occurs only after prophage induction. Such induction and subsequent lytic development of Shiga toxin-converting bacteriophages results not only in prod...

Shiga toxin 1 (Stx1) is located in the periplasmic fraction, while Stx2 is found in the extracellular fraction, suggesting that enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) contains a specific Stx2 release system. Both stx(1) and stx(2) are found within the late operons of Stx-encoding phages. Stx2 production is greatly induced by mitomycin C, suggesting that stx(2) can transcribe from the late ph...

Edema disease, a naturally occurring disease of swine caused by Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC), was used as a model for the sequence of events that occur in the pathogenesis of STEC infection. The mean time from production of levels of Shiga toxin 2e (Stx2e) detectable in the feces (day 1) to the onset of clinical disease (neurologic disturbances or death) was 5 days (range, 3-9)...

Fusion of two genes at DNA level produces a single protein, known as a chimeric protein. Immunotoxins are chimeric proteins composed of specific cell targeting and cell killing moieties. Bacterial or plant toxins are commonly used as the killing moieties of the chimeric immunotoxins. In this investigation, the catalytic domain of Shiga-like toxin (A1) was fused to human granulocyte macrophage ...