the possibility that infectious agents may trigger a cascade of reactions leading to inflammation, atherogenesis and vascular thrombotic events has recently been raised. chlamydia pneumoniae is an infectious agent that has received the most attention with respect to coronary artery disease (cad). to determine the relationship between c. pneumoniae and cad, a case control study was conducted on ...

background: recent studies have suggested that chronic infections with chlamydia pneumoniae (cpn) and helicobacter pylori (hp) may be associated with the risk of myocardial infarction (mi). methods: a cross sectional study was conducted on 140 citizens. seroprevalence was assessed by elisa tests measuring iga and igg antibodies to cpn and hp in sera. results: among patients, %11.4 and %90.0 wer...

Genome reduction is a hallmark of obligate intracellular pathogens such as Chlamydia, where adaptation to intracellular growth has resulted in the elimination of genes encoding biosynthetic enzymes. Accordingly, chlamydiae rely heavily on the host cell for nutrients yet their specific source is unclear. Interestingly, chlamydiae grow within a pathogen-defined vacuole that is in close apposition...

BACKGROUND Intracellular pathogens have developed elaborate strategies for silent infection of preferred host cells. Chlamydia pneumoniae is a common pathogen in acute infections of the respiratory tract (e.g. pneumonia) and associated with chronic lung sequelae in adults and children. Within the lung, alveolar macrophages and polymorph nuclear neutrophils (PMN) are the first line of defense ag...

Chlamydia trachomatis and Chlamydia pneumoniae appear to share a common immunobiology with about 80% of their protein coding genes being orthologs. Progress in DNA vaccine development for C. trachomatis suggests that such a subunit approach may prove useful for C. pneumoniae. The recent finding that it is possible to select for chlamydiae with targeted mutations in key metabolic genes together ...

The application of modern research tools has broadened our understanding of the chlamydiae and their role in disease. Chlamydial genome analysis showed the presence of genes for ATP and peptidoglycan synthesis, contradicting the common belief that chlamydiae lack the ability to produce these compounds. Phylogenetic tree analysis suggests that chlamydiae could have evolved from an intracellular ...

Chlamydiae, obligate intracellular bacteria, cause significant human and veterinary associated diseases. Having emerged an estimated 700-million years ago, these bacteria have twice adapted to humans as a host species, causing sexually transmitted infection (C. trachomatis) and respiratory associated disease (C. pneumoniae). The principle mechanism of host cell defense against these intracellul...

Chlamydiae are important pathogens of humans and animals but diagnosis of chlamydial infections is still hampered by inadequate detection methods. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) using rRNA-targeted oligonucleotide probes is widely used for the investigation of uncultured bacteria in complex microbial communities and has recently also been shown to be a valuable tool for the rapid det...

We read with great interest the data reported by Castilla and Wadowsky about the elimination of a Mycoplasma hominis-like mycoplasma from the TW-183 strain of Chlamydia pneumoniae and its lack of effect on chlamydial infection of HEp-2 cells (1). We recently described detection of Mycoplasma fermentans, M. hominis, and M. hyorhinis in several strains of C. trachomatis and C. pneumoniae, the suc...

UNLABELLED The chlamydiae are important human pathogens. Lack of a genetic manipulation system has impeded understanding of the molecular bases of virulence for these bacteria. We developed a dendrimer-enabled system for transformation of chlamydiae and used it to characterize the effects of inserting the C. trachomatis plasmid into C. pneumoniae, which lacks any plasmids. The plasmid was clone...