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Bordetella pertussis, the agent of pertussis or whooping cough. Gram stain. (CDC)

Bordetella pertussis colonizes the cilia of the mammalian respiratory epithelium (Figure 1). Generally, it is thought that B. pertussis does not invade the tissues, but some recent work has shown the bacterium in alveolar macrophages. The bacterium is a pathogen for humans and possibly for higher primates, and no other reservoir is known. Whooping cough is a relatively mild disease in adults but has a significant mortality rate in infants. Until immunization was introduced in the 1930s, whooping cough was one of the most frequent and severe diseases of infants in the United States.

The second or toxemic stage of pertussis follows relatively nonspecific symptoms of the colonizaton stage. It begins gradually with prolonged and paroxysmal coughing that often ends in a characteristic inspiratory gasp (whoop). To hear the characteristic sound of whooping cough click whoop.wav (whoop.wav is copyright of Dr Doug Jenkinson, Nottingham, England. www.whoopingcough.net). During the second stage, B. pertussis can rarely be recovered, and antimicrobial agents have no effect on the progress of the disease. As described below, this stage is mediated by a variety of soluble toxins.

One of the toxins of B. pertussis, the pertussis toxin (PTx), is also involved in adherence to the tracheal epithelium. Pertussis toxin is a 105 kDa protein composed of six subunits: S1, S2, S3, (2)S4, and S5. The toxin is both secreted into the extracellular fluid and cell bound. Some components of the cell-bound toxin (S2 and S3) function as adhesins, and appear to bind the bacteria to host cells. S2 and S3 utilize different receptors on host cells. S2 binds specifically to a glycolipid called lactosylceramide, which is found primarily on the ciliated epithelial cells. S3 binds to a glycoprotein found mainly on phagocytic cells.

The S1 subunit of pertussis toxin is the A component with ADP ribosylating activity, and the function of S2 and S3 is presumed to be involved in binding the intact (extracellular) toxin to its target cell surface. Antibodies against PTx components prevent colonization of ciliated cells by the bacteria and provide effective protection against infection. Thus, pertussis toxin is clearly an important virulence factor in the initial colonization stage of the infection.

Since the S3 subunit of pertussis toxin is able to bind to the surface of phagocytes, and since FHA will attach to integrin CR3 on phagocyte surfaces (the receptor for complement C3b), it has been speculated that the bacterium might bind preferentially to phagocytes in order to facilitate its own engulfment. The role of such self-initiated phagocytosis is not clear. Bacteria taken up by this abnormal route may avoid stimulating the oxidative burst that normally accompanies phagocytic uptake of bacterial cells which are opsonized by antibodies or complement C3b. Once inside of cells the bacteria might utilize other toxins (i.e. adenylate cyclase toxin) to compromise the bactericidal activities of phagocytes. In any case, there is some evidence that Bordetella pertussis can use this mechanism to get into and to persist in phagocytes as an intracellular parasite. If B. pertussis is an intracellular parasite it would explain why immunity to pertussis correlates better with the presence of specific cytotoxic T cells than it does with the presence of antibodies to bacterial products.

B. pertussis produces at least two other types of adhesins, two types of fimbriae and a nonfimbrial surface protein called pertactin, but their role in adherence and pathogenesis is not well established.