Recent studies on Neisseria gonorrhoeae have yielded suggestions that the surfaces of these organisms play vital roles as pathogenetic determiners in gonococcal infections. Virulence has been correlated with specific gonococcal colony forms by Kellogg et al. (1, 2). This finding was established through inoculation of human volunteers with organisms derived from the various colony types that cou...

In a case of disseminated gonococcal infection the diagnosis was delayed until Neisseria gonorrhoeae was grown from pus from a discharging abscess of the biceps muscle. This unusual skin manifestation appears not to have been reported before.

n engl j med 366;6 nejm.org february 9, 2012 485 Gonorrhea is the second most commonly reported communicable disease in the United States, with an estimated incidence of more than 600,000 cases annually. It disproportionately affects vulnerable populations such as minorities who are marginalized because of race, ethnic group, or sexual orientation. Unfortunately, Neisseria gonorrhoeae has alway...

Neisseria gonorrhoeae that resist complement-dependent killing by normal human serum (NHS) are sometimes killed by immune convalescent serum from patients recovering from disseminated gonococcal infection (DGI). In these studies, killing by immune serum was prevented or blocked by IgG isolated from NHS. Purified human IgG antibodies directed against gonococcal protein III, an antigenically cons...

Studies of the effect of sex hormones on the susceptibility of mice to the disseminated gonococcal infection demonstrated significantly enhanced susceptibility of mice injected with estrogen (17 beta-estradiol). In mice treated with estradiol, bacteremia progressively developed within 12 h postinoculation and mice died within the next 6 h, whereas bacteremia in mice treated with progesterone wa...

Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the causative agent of the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhoea, is an ancient disease with biblical references. Despite ongoing efforts towards treatment and prevention, gonorrhoea remains a major public health problem worldwide with an estimated global incidence of 106 million cases/ year, leading to direct and indirect costs that exceed $1 billion/year in the USA ...

Three cases of pharyngeal gonorrhoea were misdiagnosed in patients harbouring meningococci which failed to utilise maltose in CTA medium. The microbiological identity of the isolates was established by other means. Although meningococci giving atypical reactions to carbohydrate utilisation tests occur only rarely, the possibility of a misdiagnosis of gonorrhea, and its social and legal repercus...

The exact mechanisms by which Neisseria gonorrhoeae invades the mucosal lining to cause local and disseminated infections are still not fully understood. The ability of gonococci to infect the human ureter and the mechanism of gonococcal infection in a stratified epithelium were investigated by using distal ureters excised from healthy adult kidney donors. In morphological terms, this tissue cl...