A Study on Human Antibody Response to Moraxella (Branhamella) Catarrhalls Antigens During Respiratory Tract Infections
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Date
1996-05
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Addis Ababa Universty
Abstract
In this study, M. catarrhalis was isolated from 68 of 200 (34.0%) sputum samples of patients
with community-acquired pneumonia. It was also found in 56 (28.0%) of the nasopharynx of
these patients. There were 42 (61.8%) males. and 26 (38.2%) females with pneumonia caused
by M. catarrhalis. Fifty one of the 68 (75.0%) had chronic underlying diseases. Of the isolates
from sputum 37 (54.4%) and 32 (57.1%) of the 56 nasopharyngeal isolates were p-Iactamase
positive. An ELISA was used to determine the antibody response of sera of patients with
pneumonia caused by M. catarrhalis to the outer membrane proteins (OMPs) of the bacterium
for both IgG-A-M and IgG31eveis in the sera. It was found that 40 of the 68 (58.8%) patients
with pneumonia caused by this organism showed significant rise in the total immunoglobulin
(IgG-A-M) level, and 43 of 68 (63.2%) in the IgG3 level in their convalescent sera. In the
control sera only I of 30 (3.3%) patients had significant rise for IgG-A-M while none of them
showed significant increase in titre for IgG3 (P< 0.05). Using lipopolysaccharide (LPS)
antigens, only 16 of 68 (23.5%) paired sera showed significant increase in antibody titre for
both IgG-A-M and IgG3 compared to 2 of 30 (6.7%) of controls (P< 0.05). Significant
bactericidal activity of the convalescent-phase sera at a dilution of 60% was detected in l3
of 15 (86.7%) of the sera assayed. The same sera without complement were used as controls
and none of the controls showed significant bactericidal activities (P< 0.05).
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Keywords
Catarrhalis