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London: We may only
have our own immune system to thank for protecting us silently
from ravages of salmonella, a bug behind severe intestinal
infections.
Generally speaking, a healthy human will only fall ill if he or
she consumes more than 100,000 salmonella bugs via contaminated
food, such as eggs or meat.
Typhoid, a disease also caused by salmonella, affects 16 million
people annually and mortality rates reach 200,000, with children
falling victim to the disease. Worldwide, 94 million people fall
ill each year with acute gastroenteritis, and 155,000 of these
die.
Tropical and sub-tropical countries in particular, where various
sub-species of salmonella are common, are experiencing a rapid
increase in resistance to antibiotics, with children being the
most vulnerable, the journal Science reports.
A team of researchers, led by Ivan Dikic from the Goethe
University in Frankfurt, Germany, has now found out how body cells
recognise salmonella and render it harmless, according to a Goethe
statement.
Salmonella infection begins with bugs entering the epithelial
(outer) cells of the intestine. Then special cell organelles (specialised
subunits within a cell), encircle the invaders and become absorbed
in other organelles which have special digestive enzymes to break
down the bacteria into their constituent parts.
But how exactly do the organelles recognise salmonella? Dikic and
his group at the Biochemistry Institute II have shed light on this
mechanism. The salmonella are marked as 'waste material' by the
molecule ubiquitin, setting off a process that results in its
destruction.
In Germany, approximately 30,000 cases of gastro diseases were
reported in 1985, but by 2005 the figure had risen to 52,000.
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