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Infection and Immunity, January 2003, p. 95-100, Vol. 71, No. 1
0019-9567/03/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/IAI.71.1.95-100.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Antibodies Present in Normal Human Serum Inhibit Invasion of Human Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells by Listeria monocytogenes

Tobias Hertzig,¹ Martin Weber,¹ Lars Greiffenberg,^1, Britta Schulte Holthausen,^1, Werner Goebel,¹ Kwang Sik Kim,² and Michael Kuhn^1*

Lehrstuhl für Mikrobiologie, Theodor-Boveri-Institut für Biowissenschaften der Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany,¹ Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland²

Received 8 July 2002/ Returned for modification 6 September 2002/ Accepted 30 September 2002

Listeria monocytogenes causes meningitis and encephalitis in humans and crosses the blood-brain barrier by yet unknown mechanisms. The interaction of the bacteria with different types of endothelial cells was recently analyzed, and it was shown that invasion into, but not adhesion to, human brain microvascular endothelial cells (HBMEC) depends on the product of the inlB gene, the surface molecule InlB, which is a member of the internalin multigene family. In the present study we analyzed the role of the medium composition in the interaction of L. monocytogenes with HBMEC, and we show that invasion of HBMEC is strongly inhibited in the presence of adult human serum. The strong inhibitory activity, which is not present in fetal calf serum, does not inhibit uptake by macrophage-like J774 cells but does also inhibit invasion of Caco-2 epithelial cells. The inhibitory component of human serum was identified as being associated with L. monocytogenes-specific antibodies present in the human serum. Human newborn serum (cord serum) shows only a weak inhibitory activity on the invasion of HBMEC by L. monocytogenes.

Editor: A. D. O'Brien

Present address: Drug Innovation and Approval, Aventis Pharma Deutschland GmbH, 65926 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Present address: Max-Planck-Institut für Vaskuläre Biologie, 48149 Münster, Germany.

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