Virulence-enhancing effect of ferric ammonium citrate on Vibrio cholerae.

Abstract

Several workers have shown that iron compounds greatly enhance the virulence of various bacteria in experimental animals as mice, rats and guinea-pigs. This virulence-enhancing effect has been demonstrated with Pasteurella pestis [1], Klebsiella pneumoniae [2, 3], Salmonella typhimurium [3], Listeria monocytogenes [4], Clostridium welchii [5–7], Pasteurella septica [6, 8–10], Escherichia coli [6, 11–13] and Pseudomonas aeruginosa [2, 14]. Various iron compounds, as ferric ammonium citrate (FAC), or sulfate and iron- containing substances as haematin hydrochloride, lysed red cells and purified haemoglobin [8, 11] proved to be equally active.