Some Staphylococcus aureus isolates produced toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1) which is a pyrogenic toxin superantigen (PTSAg). The toxin activates a large fraction of peripheral blood T lymphocytes causing the cells to proliferate and release massive amounts of pro-inflammatory cytokines leading to a life-threatening multisystem disorder: toxic shock syndrome (TSS). PTSAg-mediated-T cell s...

The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is a well validated and widely used social stressor that has been shown to induce a 2-4 fold increase in cortisol, the biological output produced by the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis in humans. While studies have explored how modifications to the TSST influence stress responsivity, few studies have created a modified TSST appropriate for vulnerabl...

Toxic shock syndrome (TSS) is a potentially fatal illness caused by infection with the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. TSS toxin-1 (TSST-1) contains a T-cell epitope with specificity for human V-beta-2. Binding of TSST-1 to the human major histocompatibility complex and T cell receptors activates T cells and triggers the secretion of high amounts of inflammatory cytokines, leading to TSS and p...

Staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome toxin 1 (TSST-1) binds to major histocompatibility complex class II molecules, and the toxin-class II complexes induce proliferation of T cells expressing V beta 2 sequences. To define the residues involved in TSST-1 binding, a set of transfectants expressing 21 HLA-DR alpha chain mutants were analyzed for their abilities to bind and present TSST-1 and to pre...

BACKGROUND Staphylococcus aureus is the most common agent of septic arthritis that is a severe, rapidly progressive and destructive joint disease. Superantigens produced by S. aureus are considered the major arthritogenic factors. In this study, we compared the arthritogenic potential of five superantigen-producing staphylococcal strains. METHODS Male C57BL/6 mice were intravenously infected ...

The present study assessed the modulating effect of education level on cortisol reactivity to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in a sample of 101 middle-aged adults (22 males, 79 females) between the ages of 50 and 65. The TSST involves a public speech and mental arithmetic task in front of an audience. No previous studies have assessed whether education level can have an impact on cortisol ...

Staphylococcal toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1), a superantigenic toxin produced by Staphylococcus (S.) aureus, is a major cause of septic shock and toxic shock syndrome. To investigate whether vaccination with a plasmid DNA encoding a non-toxic mutant TSST-1 (mTSST-1) can protect mice against wild-type TSST-1-induced lethal shock, the mice were intranasally immunized with the plasmid DNA ...

A large and diverse group of coagulase-negative staphylococci were assayed for the ability to produce toxic shock syndrome toxin 1 (TSST-1) by immunological reactivity, and whole-cell DNAs from 33 of these strains were hybridized with a TSST-1-specific gene probe. None of the strains tested, including isolates that have been reported as TSST-1+, produced the exotoxin, and no DNA homology was fo...

An improved method for producing highly purified toxic shock syndrome toxin 1 (TSST-1) by preparative isoelectric focusing in a Bio-Rad Rotofor cell and then chromatofocusing is described. Purification to homogeneity was confirmed by silver staining after sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE; 50 micrograms of protein was loaded), by immunoblotting with polyclonal ...

objective : the aim of study was to develop a rapid assay, dye labelled monoclonal antibody assay (dlmaa), using non-radioactive organic synthetic dyes for identification of toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (tsst-1) producing strains of staphylococcus aureus. materials and methods: the assay protocol required only two simple steps; addition of tsst-1 antigen to a nitrocellulose membrane and then ad...