Brucellosis in humans is a zoonosis of greatly varied clinical image. It occurs on all inhabited continents. The course of the disease may be acute, sub-acute or chronic. The etiologic factors of brucellosis are small, aerobic Gram-negative rods of the genus Brucella, which currently contains ten species: B. abortus, B. suis, B. ovis, B. melitensis, B. canis, B. neotomae, B. pinnipedialis, B. c...

OBJECTIVES Brucella spp. are facultative intracellular pathogens which can stay alive and multiply in professional and nonprofessional phagocytes. Immunity against Brucella melitensis involves antigen-specific CD4(+) and CD8(+) T-cells activation and humoral immune responses. Due to negative aspects of live attenuated vaccines, much attention has been focused on finding Brucella-protective anti...

The routine identification and differentiation of Brucella species is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process, which frequently places personnel at risk of laboratoryacquired infection. Here, we describe the development of a rapid multiplex PCR assay for the confirmation of presumptive Brucella isolates. The assay was able to identify and differentiate major human pathogens, namely B. abor...

Brucella melitensis is an intracellular pathogen that establishes a replicative niche within macrophages. While the intracellular lifestyle of Brucella is poorly understood and few virulence factors have been identified, components of a quorum-sensing pathway in Brucella have recently been identified. The LuxR-type regulatory protein, VjbR, and an N-acylhomoserine lactone signaling molecule are...

BACKGROUND Brucellosis may cause serious infections in healthy individuals living in countries that are endemic for the infection. However, reports of brucella infections in immunocompromised hosts are relatively rare. CASE PRESENTATIONS Reported here are two patients with acute leukemia who developed Brucella melitensis bacteremia during their follow up at the Armed Forces Hospital in Riyadh...

The genus Brucella consists of bacterial pathogens that cause brucellosis, a major zoonotic disease characterized by undulant fever and neurological disorders in humans. Among the different Brucella species, Brucella melitensis is considered the most virulent. Despite successful use in animals, the vaccine strains remain infectious for humans. To understand the mechanism of virulence in B. meli...

The lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is considered the major virulent factor in Brucella spp. Several genes have been identified involved in the synthesis of the three LPS components: lipid A, core and O-PS. Usually, Brucella strains devoid of O-PS (rough mutants) are less virulent than the wild type and do not induce undesirable interfering antibodies. Such of them proved to be protective against bruc...

background: brucellosis is one of the most common zoonosis in middle east and iran. objectives: the purpose of this study was genomic detection of brucella spp. in sero-positive dairy cattle. methods: we have collected 28,519 blood samples from cows during 2012-2013. samples were screened by slide and tube agglutination and 2-mercaptoethanol tests. samples with anti-brucella antibodies titer ≥ ...

A newly isolated smooth colony morphology phage-resistant strain 8416 isolated from a 45-year-old cattle farm cleaner with clinical features of brucellosis in China was reported. The most unusual phenotype was its resistance to two Brucella phages Tbilisi and Weybridge, but sensitive to Berkeley 2, a pattern similar to that of Brucella melitensis biovar 1. VITEK 2 biochemical identification sys...

BACKGROUND MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry (MS) is a reliable method for bacteria identification. Some databases used for this purpose lack reference profiles for Brucella species, which is still an important pathogen in wide areas around the world. We report the creation of profiles for MALDI-TOF Biotyper 2.0 database (Bruker Daltonics, Germany) and their usefulness for identifying brucellae from ...