apoptosis

Acinetobacter baumannii has emerged as an important etiological agent of hospital-related infections, especially nosocomial pneumonia. The virulence factors of this bacterium and their interactions with the cells and molecules of the immune system just recently began to be extensively studied. Here, we investigated the impact of alveolar macrophages on...

Apoptotic cell death can be an efficient defense reaction of mammalian cells infected with obligate intracellular pathogens; the host cell dies and the pathogen cannot replicate. While this is well established for viruses, there is little experimental support for such a concept in bacterial infections. All Chlamydiales are obligate intracellular bacteria, and different species infect vastly different hosts....

Neutrophils are the most abundant circulating leukocytes in humans and are essential for the defense against invading pathogens. Like many other cells of an organism, neutrophils can be highly influenced by the diet. We have previously described that mice fed a high-fat diet rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids (HFD-P) present a higher frequency of neutrophils in bone marrow than mice fed a high-fat diet rich in saturated fatty acids (...