Journal article
Toxin B is essential for virulence of Clostridium difficile
D Lyras, JR O'Connor, PM Howarth, SP Sambol, GP Carter, T Phumoonna, R Poon, V Adams, G Vedantam, S Johnson, DN Gerding, JI Rood
Nature | NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP | Published : 2009
DOI: 10.1038/nature07822
Abstract
Clostridium difficile is the leading cause of infectious diarrhoea in hospitals worldwide, because of its virulence, spore-forming ability and persistence. C. difficile-associated diseases are induced by antibiotic treatment or disruption of the normal gastrointestinal flora. Recently, morbidity and mortality resulting from C. difficile-associated diseases have increased significantly due to changes in the virulence of the causative strains and antibiotic usage patterns. Since 2002, epidemic toxinotype III NAP1/027 strains, which produce high levels of the major virulence factors, toxin A and toxin B, have emerged. These toxins have 63% amino acid sequence similarity and are members of the l..
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Awarded by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Funding Acknowledgements
Research at Monash University was supported by Program Grant 284214 from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Structural and Functional Microbial Genomics and grant AIO57637 from the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. S.J., D.N.G., and G.V. were supported by Merit Review Grants from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs Research Service. We thank D. Lyerly, K. Aktories and C. von-Eichel Streiber for providing toxin-A-specific and toxin-B-specific antibodies, K. Nagaro and A. Cheknis for assistance with the hamster experiments, V.K. Viswanathan for providing intestinal epithelial cell lines, E. Hartland for providing the HT29 cell line, and M. Merrigan for adherence assays.