Journal
FEMS MICROBIOLOGY REVIEWS
Volume 34, Issue 3, Pages 260-280Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1111/j.1574-6976.2009.00207.x
Keywords
free-living amoebae; amoebae-resisting bacteria; Legionella; Chlamydia-like bacteria; mycobacteria; pneumonia
Categories
Funding
- Swiss National Science Foundation [310030-124843, 3200BO-116445, PDFMP3-127302]
- American National Institutes of Health [7R03AI067412-02]
- Swiss HIV cohort study [SHCS421, SHCS515]
- SUEZ-ONDEO (Paris, France)
- 3R Foundation [99/05]
- Infectigen foundation [In010]
- University of Lausanne
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES [R03AI067412] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
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Despite using modern microbiological diagnostic approaches, the aetiological agents of pneumonia remain unidentified in about 50% of cases. Some bacteria that grow poorly or not at all in axenic media used in routine clinical bacteriology laboratory but which can develop inside amoebae may be the agents of these lower respiratory tract infections (RTIs) of unexplained aetiology. Such amoebae-resisting bacteria, which coevolved with amoebae to resist their microbicidal machinery, may have developed virulence traits that help them survive within human macrophages, i.e. the first line of innate immune defence in the lung. We review here the current evidence for the emerging pathogenic role of various amoebae-resisting microorganisms as agents of RTIs in humans. Specifically, we discuss the emerging pathogenic roles of Legionella-like amoebal pathogens, novel Chlamydiae (Parachlamydia acanthamoebae, Simkania negevensis), waterborne mycobacteria and Bradyrhizobiaceae (Bosea and Afipia spp.).
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