Abstract
Bacteria adapt themselves to various environmental conditions in nature, which can lead to bacterial adaptation and persistence in the host as commensals or pathogens. In healthy individuals, host defense mechanisms prevent the opportunistic bacteria/commensals from becoming a pathological infection. However, certain pathological conditions can impair normal defense barriers leading to bacterial survival and persistence. Under pathological conditions such as chronic lung inflammation, bacteria employ various mechanisms from structural changes to protease secretion to manipulate and evade the host immune response and create a niche permitting commensal bacteria to thrive into infections. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms by which pathogenic bacteria survive in the host tissues and organs may offer new strategies to overcome persistent bacterial infections. In this review, we will discuss and highlight the complex interactions between airway pathogenic bacteria and immune responses in several major chronic inflammatory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Highlights
Human lungs are in constant interaction with different bacteria and bacterial particles and are exposed to a variety of environmental threats
The major goal of this review is to present some unique survival mechanisms exploited by several strains of bacteria commonly seen in lung infectious and inflammatory processes related to the utilization of the host toll like receptors (TLRs) signaling pathways
About more than 50% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) infective exacerbations are due to bacterial infections [16]
Summary
Human lungs are in constant interaction with different bacteria and bacterial particles and are exposed to a variety of environmental threats. The healthy human lungs used to be considered sterile, but recent studies have reshaped this belief. Human lungs are colonized with diverse bacteria including the genera Prevotella, Streptococcus, Klebsiella, Veillonella, Neisseria, Haemophilus, pseudomonas, and Fusobacterium [1, 2]. These bacterial species can persist in the lungs and often give rise to super infections followed by viral infections. It has been shown that in airway chronic inflammatory diseases such as asthma, there is a shift in the lung microbiota toward a greater diversity in species richness [3]
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