Recent perspectives forecast a new paradigm for future "third generation" vaccines based on commonalities found in diverse pathogens or convergent immune defenses to such pathogens. For Staphylococcus aureus, recurring infections and a limited success of vaccines containing S. aureus antigens imply that native antigens induce immune responses insufficient for optimal efficacy. These perspective...

Immunological assays such as CIE, LA, and Dot-ELISA were compared in order to diagnose community-acquired pneumonia. Serum, pleural fluid and urine samples were comparatively employed for bacterial antigen detection. Dot-ELISA proved to be an original and practical alternative procedure for detecting bacterial polysaccharide antigens from pleural fluid and/or concentrated urine samples, providi...

Polyomavirus small t antigen was purified from genetically engineered Escherichia coli and used as the immunogen for the production of polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies. A new series of plasmids for increased expression of polyomavirus T antigens or a T antigen-beta-galactosidase fusion protein was constructed by replacing sequences coding for the ribosome-binding site of previously publishe...

Vaccination has been proposed for the prevention of disease due to enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC), but the immune response following human infection, including the choice of potential antigens, has not been well characterized. To study this, sera were obtained from five pediatric patients with acute diarrhea caused by E. coli O157:H7 0, 8, and 60 days after hospitalization. These ser...

It has been postulated that immunogenicity results from the overall dissimilarity of pathogenic proteins versus the host proteome. We have sought to use this concept to discriminate between antigens and non-antigens of bacterial origin. Sets of 100 known antigenic and nonantigenic peptide sequences from bacteria were compared to human and mouse proteomes. Both antigenic and non-antigenic sequen...

Across the eubacteria, antigenic variation has emerged as a strategy to evade host immunity. However, phenotypic variation in some of these antigens also allows the bacteria to exploit variable host niches as well. The specific mechanisms are not shared-derived characters although there is considerable convergent evolution and numerous commonalities reflecting considerations of natural selectio...

We compared lymphocyte subsets and cytokine responses to bacteria among term, preterm infants, and adults. Lymphocyte subset percentages in cord blood (22 preterm, 27 term neonates) and peripheral blood from 21 adults and cytokine/chemokine interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12, interferon gamma (IFN gamma) responses to Escherichia coli, group B Streptococcus (GBS), Staphylococcus epidermidis,...

To investigate the involvement of bacterial antigens in Immunoglobulin A (IgA) nephropathy, we measured IgA, IgG and IgM antibodies to gram-negative Escherichia coli (E.coli) and Haemophilus influenzae (H.influenzae) by ELISA in 24 patients (11 males and 13 females) with IgA nephropathy and 22 normal controls (11 males and 11 females). The titers of IgA and IgM antibodies for E.coli and H.influ...