Abstract
Streptococcus agalactiae (Group B Streptococcus, GBS) is an opportunistic pathogen, which asymptomatically colonizes the gastrointestinal and genitourinary tract of up to one third of healthy adults. Nevertheless, GBS carriage in pregnant women may lead to several health issues in newborns causing life threatening infection, such as sepsis, pneumonia or meningitis. Recommended GBS screening in pregnant women significantly reduced morbidity and mortality in infants. Nevertheless, intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis, recommended following the detection of carriage or in case of lack of a carriage test result for pregnant women who demonstrate certain risk factors, led to the expansion of the adverse phenomenon of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. In our paper, we reviewed some immunogenic GBS proteins, i.e., Alp family proteins, β protein, Lmb, Sip, BibA, FsbA, ScpB, enolase, elongation factor Tu, IMPDH, and GroEL, which possess features characteristic of good candidates for immunodiagnostic assays for GBS carriage detection, such as immunoreactivity and specificity. We assume that they can be used as an alternative diagnostic method to the presently recommended bacteriological cultivation and MALDI.
Highlights
Streptococcus agalactiae (Group B Streptococcus, GBS) is a β-hemolytic, Gram-positive bacterium, which colonizes the gastrointestinal and genitourinary tract of up to 30% of healthy adults [1]
We aimed to review some immunogenic proteins representative of Streptococcus agalactiae, which demonstrate features qualifying them as potential biomarkers in an innovative immunodiagnostic assay for the detection of GBS carriage and/or infection in pregnant women
Anti-Elongation factor thermo unstable (EF Tu) antibodies are being detected after infection caused by several pathogen species Vaccine against GBS based on EF Tu is being studied for tilapia Mouse vaccination with rEF Tu of S. pneumoniae led to increased numbers of cytokine, IgG1 and IgG2a, and CD4+ T-cell Epitopes of GBS EF Tu are being investigated as potential biomarkers in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) assay for carrier/infection diagnosis
Summary
Streptococcus agalactiae (Group B Streptococcus, GBS) is a β-hemolytic, Gram-positive bacterium, which colonizes the gastrointestinal and genitourinary tract of up to 30% of healthy adults [1]. In response to this threat, in the 1990s, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed guidelines to minimize this dangerous phenomenon, which led to a reduction in morbidity in newborns of over 80%, and presently the incidence of the disease caused by GBS reaches 0.23/1000 live births [4,5,6] It included screening recommendations for women between the 36th (36-0/7) and 37th (37-0/7) week of pregnancy, by taking swabs from the vaginal introitus and the anal sphincter, followed by microbial cultivation on the appropriate growth medium [4]. It is worth underlining that such an assay could be useful in the diagnostic of GBS infection in adults, in which this bacterium constitutes a growing clinical problem, taking the form of urinary tracts infection (UTI), sepsis, septic arthritis, meningitis and it is isolated from diabetic foot/ulcer [9]
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