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Infection and Immunity, June 2000, p. 3535-3540, Vol. 68, No. 6
Department of Medical Microbiology, Turku
Immunology Centre, Turku Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences,
Turku University, Turku, Finland
Received 6 December 1999/Returned for modification 18 January
2000/Accepted 23 March 2000
To study what determines the arthritogenicity of bacterial cell
walls, cell wall-induced arthritis in the rat was applied, using four
strains of Lactobacillus. Three of the strains used proved
to induce chronic arthritis in the rat; all were Lactobacillus casei. The cell wall of Lactobacillus fermentum did
not induce chronic arthritis. All arthritogenic bacterial cell walls
had the same peptidoglycan structure, whereas that of L. fermentum was different. Likewise, all arthritogenic cell
walls were resistant to lysozyme degradation, whereas the L. fermentum cell wall was lysozyme sensitive. Muramic acid was
observed in the liver, spleen, and lymph nodes in
considerably larger amounts after injection of an arthritogenic
L. casei cell wall than following injection of a
nonarthritogenic L. fermentum cell wall. The L. casei cell wall also persisted in the tissues longer than the
L. fermentum cell wall. The present results,
taken together with those published previously, underline the
possibility that the chemical structure of peptidoglycan is important
in determining the arthritogenicity of the bacterial cell wall.
0019-9567/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Bacterial Cell Wall-Induced Arthritis: Chemical Composition and
Tissue Distribution of Four Lactobacillus Strains
imelyte,*
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Medical Microbiology, Kiinamyllynkatu 13, FIN-20520 Turku, Finland.
Phone: 358 2 333 7405. Fax: 358 2 233 0008. E-mail:
eglesim{at}utu.fi.
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