NYMC Faculty Publications
Journal Title
PLoS One
First Page
e0177784
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-1-2017
Department
Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology
Abstract
The secreted cysteine proteinase SpeB is an important virulence factor of group A streptococci (GAS), whereby SpeB activity varies widely among strains. To establish the degree to which SpeB activity correlates with disease, GAS organisms were recovered from patients with pharyngitis, impetigo, invasive disease or acute rheumatic fever (ARF), and selected for analysis using rigorous sampling criteria; >300 GAS isolates were tested for SpeB activity by casein digestion assays, and each GAS isolate was scored as a SpeB-producer or non-producer. Highly significant statistical differences (p < 0.01) in SpeB production are observed between GAS recovered from patients with ARF (41.5% SpeB-non-producers) compared to pharyngitis (20.5%), invasive disease (16.7%), and impetigo (5.5%). SpeB activity differences between pharyngitis and impetigo isolates are also significant, whereas pharyngitis versus invasive isolates show no significant difference. The disproportionately greater number of SpeB-non-producers among ARF-associated isolates may indicate an altered transcriptional program for many rheumatogenic strains and/or a protective role for SpeB in GAS-triggered autoimmunity.
Recommended Citation
Ly, A., Noto, J., Walwyn, O., Tanz, R., Shulman, S., Kabat, W., & Bessen, D. (2017). Differences in SpeB Protease Activity Among Group A Streptococci Associated With Superficial, Invasive, and Autoimmune Disease. PLoS One, 12 (5), e0177784. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0177784
Publisher's Statement
Originally published in PLoS ONE 12(5): e0177784. The original material can be found here.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
