Salmonella Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Salmonella, including details on salmonella typhimurium, food poisoning, infection, treatment.

Simian immunodeficiency virus-induced mucosal interleukin-17 deficiency promotes Salmonella dissemination from the gut.

Raffatellu M, Santos RL, Verhoeven DE, George MD, Wilson RP, Winter SE, Godinez I, Sankaran S, Paixao TA, Gordon MA, Kolls JK, Dandekar S, Bäumler AJ

Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, University of California at Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, California 95616-8645, USA.

Salmonella typhimurium causes a localized enteric infection in immunocompetent individuals, whereas HIV-infected individuals develop a life-threatening bacteremia. Here we show that simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection results in depletion of T helper type 17 (T(H)17) cells in the ileal mucosa of rhesus macaques, thereby impairing mucosal barrier functions to S. typhimurium dissemination. In SIV-negative macaques, the gene expression profile induced by S. typhimurium in ligated ileal loops was dominated by T(H)17 responses, including the expression of interleukin-17 (IL-17) and IL-22. T(H)17 cells were markedly depleted in SIV-infected rhesus macaques, resulting in blunted T(H)17 responses to S. typhimurium infection and increased bacterial dissemination. IL-17 receptor-deficient mice showed increased systemic dissemination of S. typhimurium from the gut, suggesting that IL-17 deficiency causes defects in mucosal barrier function. We conclude that SIV infection impairs the IL-17 axis, an arm of the mucosal immune response preventing systemic microbial dissemination from the gastrointestinal tract.

Published 8 April 2008 in Nat Med, 14(4): 421-8.
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