Host susceptibility and clinical outcomes in toll-like receptor 5-deficient patients with typhoid fever in Vietnam

Abstract

Toll-like receptor 5 (TLR5) mediates innate immune responses to bacterial pathogens by binding to flagellin. A polymorphism in the TLR5 gene introduces a premature stop codon (TLR5392STOP) that is associated with susceptibility to legionnaires disease. Here we investigated whether TLR5 392STOP was associated with typhoid fever. The frequency of TLR5 392STOP was not significantly different in 565 patients with typhoid fever and 281 ethnically matched control subjects. Furthermore, TLR5 deficiency had no measurable effect on a number of clinical parameters associated with typhoid fever, including fever clearance time, pathogen burden, disease severity, or age at acquisition of disease. TLR5 ma..