实验动物总则

Cytokines are important mediators in inflammation, and play a key role in inflammation induced by Gram-negative bacteria. Cytokines are released into serum during different pathological conditions, such as meningococcal disease, and the cytokine levels in serum seem to correlate ...

Cytokines play a pivotal role in both defense against meningococcal infection and the pathophysiology of invasive meningococcal disease. These chemical messengers are crucial cogwheels in the machinery of the innate immune system and are also powerful forces in the antigen-speci ...

The genetic regulation of the host response to infection is crucial for understanding susceptibility to and outcome of meningococcal disease. The initial host response depends on the innate immune system, after which specific immunity is attained when antibodies from the adaptive im ...

Humans are the only natural reservoir for meningococci. The appropriate specimens that should be taken for isolation of meningococci are dependent on the clinical question. The most appropriate specimen and/or laboratory techniques for microbiological diagnosis in an acutely s ...

Disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) is a complex acquired, coagulopathy resulting from excessive thrombin formation. Abnormal tissue factor (TF) expression is a major mechanism initiating DIC in many disorders, including obstetric complications, sepsis, canc ...

Complement is an immunological effector system that bridges innate and acquired immunity in several ways. There is a striking association between susceptibility to meningococcal disease and various forms of complement deficiency (1,2). In defense against bacterial infection, ...

Microorganisms or microbial products have been shown to induce or protect cells from activation-induced cell death or apoptosis (1–3). Induction of apoptosis by some bacterial invaders, like shigella, might aid in spread of the organism (4), whereas inhibition of apoptosis by other micro ...

It is recognized that improvement in the practice of clinical medicine, including confirmation of the safety and efficacy of some current interventions, depends greatly on the pursuit of appropriate research. It therefore follows that improved clinical care of children depends on th ...

Neisseria meningitidis is a human specific pathogen and resides primarily in the nasopharynx of its host. The molecular-recognition mechanisms that operate at the host-microbe interface to impart such precise host/tissue specificity are not fully defined. Given the host muco-cil ...

This chapter will describe the use of organ cultures of human nasopharyngeal mucosa to study the interaction of Neisseria meningitidis with this complex tissue. Colonization of nasopharyngeal mucosa is the first step in the pathogenesis of meningococcal disease. Supporting evide ...

The vascular endothelium forms an essential barrier against invasion by Neisseria meningitidis from the nasopharynx into the circulation and against meningococcal invasion from the bloodstream into the brain. In previous chapters, there has therefore been considerable emph ...

Neisseria meningitidis is an extracellular pathogen responsible for septicemia and meningitis. The occurrence of meningitis requires that bacteria cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and induce an inflammatory response within the sub arachnoid space. The mechanisms that lead ...

Many bacterial genes are regulated in an environment-responsive fashion, and from the perspective of a pathogen, the host represents just another environment. Many genes that contribute to virulence are differentially expressed in response to host environments that they encount ...

Nonculture diagnosis is of increasing importance in maximizing case ascertainment of disease owing to Neisseria meningitidis (1). In the United Kingdom (UK), greater use of pre-admission antibiotics has lead to a steady decline in the total number of cases confirmed by culture, compared to ...

Signature-tagged mutagenesis (STM) was originally developed by David Holden while studying the filamentous fungus Aspergillus fumigatus. In attempts to define virulence determinants for this pathogenic fungus, candidate factors were selected by reference to previous cir ...

Meningococcal meningitis and septicemia are serious infections with significant morbidity and mortality. A sensitive affordable test is required to provide evidence of meningococcal disease at the earliest opportunity to improve local management and give early warning of po ...

Meningococcal serology has been mainly used over the last 20 years in the field of vaccinology, to evaluate candidate vaccines and quantify individuals’ immune responses. With the increasing usage of pre-admission antibiotic treatment (1), nonculture diagnostic methods such as pol ...

At the start of the Third Millennium, consensus has yet to be reached regarding the best techniques for meningococcal susceptibility testing and their standardization. Worse, there is no general agreement as to the definition of resistance, or perhaps more accurately, nonsusceptibi ...

Neisseria meningitidis was previously considered extremely susceptible to penicillin, with most isolates showing minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of ≦ 0.06 μg/mL. However, meningococcal isolates with decreased susceptibility to penicillin have been reported f ...

A combination of data obtained by classical epidemiological techniques with insights gained from the analysis of the population biology of Neisseria meningitidis have proved to be critical in understanding the spread of menin-gococcal disease. This is a consequence of the natural hi ...