Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 August 2009
INTRODUCTION
Escherichia coli is the most abundant facultative anaerobe found in the human intestinal microbial flora. This organism resides in the mucus layer of the mammalian colon, and typically colonizes the gastrointestinal tract of humans a few hours after birth. However, there are several clones of E. coli that have acquired virulence traits that allow them to cause a broad spectrum of disease. These virulence traits are usually encoded within mobile genetic elements, such as plasmids and pathogenicity islands, that have evolved to be stable within these clones. Three general clinical syndromes result from the infection with these pathotypes: diarrheal disease, urinary tract infections, and meningitis/sepsis. Among the intestinal pathogens there are six well-described categories: enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC), enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC), enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC), enteroinvasive E. coli (EIEC), and diffusely adherent E. coli (DAEC) (59). This chapter will focus primarily on EHEC and EPEC, given that quorum sensing has been mostly described within these pathotypes.
ENTEROHEMORRHAGIC E. COLI (EHEC)
Enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) O157:H7 is responsible for major outbreaks of bloody diarrhea and hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) throughout the world. EHEC causes an estimated 73,000 illnesses, 2,000 hospitalizations, and 60 deaths in the United States alone each year. EHEC has a very low infectious dose (as few as 50 cfu); this is one of the major contributing factors to EHEC outbreaks.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.