There is now considerable evidence that colonization or infection with Staphylococcus aureus is an exacerbating factor in atopic dermatitis (AD) (1). Numerous studies have shown that the superantigens produced by staphylococci and streptococci are implicated in the pathogenesis of various inflammatory skin diseases. The skin lesions of patients with AD predominantly contain infiltrating T cells...

Superantigens are important virulence factors in the pathogenesis of invasive disease caused by group A streptococcus (GAS). There has been a recent re-emergence of this disease worldwide. A number of novel superantigens have been described recently. This study investigated 107 isolates of GAS for possession of each of the 11 currently known superantigen genes to determine the prevalence, co-oc...

Dendritic cells are a small subset of human blood mononuclear cells that are potent stimulators of several T cell functions. Here we show they are 10-50-fold more potent than monocytes or B cells in inducing T cell responses to a panel of superantigens. Furthermore, dendritic cells can present femtomolar concentrations of superantigen to T cells even at numbers where other antigen-presenting ce...

Human gammadelta T cells expressing the Vgamma2Vdelta2 antigen receptors recognize nonpeptide prenyl pyrophosphate and alkylamine antigens. We find that they also recognize staphylococcal enterotoxin A superantigens in a manner distinct from the recognition of nonpeptide antigens. Using chimeric and mutant toxins, SEA amino acid residues 20-27 were shown to be required for gammadelta TCR recogn...

Recombinant streptococcal pyrogenic exotoxin C (SPE-C) is a potent superantigen that stimulates VJ32-bearing human T cells, but is inactive in mice. SPE-C binds with high affinity to both human H L A D R and murine I-E molecules, but not to routine I-A molecules in a zincdependent fashion. Competition binding studies with other recombinant toxins revealed that SPE-C lacks the generic low affini...

It has recently been shown that open reading frames in the 3' long terminal repeats of mouse mammary tumor viruses encode superantigens. These viral superantigens (vSAGs) stimulate most T cells expressing appropriate V beta s almost regardless of the rest of the variable components of the T cell receptors (TCR) expressed by those cells. vSAGs produce a type II integral membrane protein with a n...

We have examined TCR V beta expression in a collection of wild mice. Many of the mice were homozygous for a large deletion at the V beta locus, and many animals also suppressed expression of several V betas using self superantigens. Expression of V beta 8.2 was unexpectedly suppressed by a self superantigen in some wild mice, which was due to the presence in these animals of a variant V beta 8....