Adnan Adams Mohammed
Gonorrhea, a popular infection among the Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), is causing havoc among the young population of the world which causes infection in the genitals, rectum, and throat.
According data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the sexually transmitted infection records about 78 million new cases worldwide each year and classified as highly damaging if untreated or improperly treated.
In their efforts to improve on the efficiency of curing and reducing the rate of cross-infection of Gonorrhoea, scientific researchers discovered an innovative vaccine.
Through their relentless effort, the researchers identified a protein that powers the virulence of the bacteria that causes gonorrhoea, opening the possibility of a new target for antibiotics and, even better, a vaccine.
The findings of the research, published recently in PLOS Pathogens, are important since the microbe, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, is considered a “superbug” because of its resistance to all classes of antibiotics available for treating infections.
Gonorrhoea, can lead to endometritis, pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancy, epididymitis and infertility. Babies born to infected mothers are at increased risk of blindness.
“The infections very often are silent,” said Oregon State University researcher Aleksandra Sikora.
“Up to 50 percent of infected women don’t have symptoms, but those asymptomatic cases can still lead to some severe consequences for the patient’s reproductive health, miscarriage or premature delivery.”
The need for better antibiotic therapy, and a vaccine, is pressing. N. gonorrhoeae strains resistant to the last effective treatment options have emerged, and failures in treatment are occurring.
Dr Sikora and her research team at the OSU/OHSU College of Pharmacy and Ann Jerse’s lab at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, collaborated to discover a novel lipoprotein that N. gonorrhoeae uses can defeat the body’s first line of innate immune defence.
It said the body relied on enzymes known as lysozymes that, as their name suggests, thwart bacteria by causing their cell wall to lyse, or break apart.
Lysozymes are abundant both in epithelial cells, which make up the tissue on the outside of organs and the inside of body cavities, and in the phagocytic cells that protect the body by ingesting foreign particles and bacteria.
In turn, many gram-negative bacteria — characterised by their cell envelope that include a protective outer membrane — have developed ways of defeating lysozymes. Prior to the work by Dr Sikora’s team, however, only one lysozyme-fighting protein had been discovered in the Neisseria genus.
Now that new targets had been identified, they could be explored as bullseye candidates for new antibiotics or a vaccine — if the lysozyme inhibitor could itself be inhibited, then the bacteria’s infection-causing ability is greatly reduced.
Dr Sikora and her collaborators named the new protein SliC, short for surface-exposed lysozyme inhibitor of c-type lysozyme.
Studying SliC’s function in culture as well as in a gonorrhoea mouse model — mice were infected with N. gonorrhoeae, then checked for SliC expression at one, three and five days — researchers determined the protein was essential to bacterial colonisation because of its anti-lysozyme role.
“This is the first time an animal model has been used to demonstrate a lysozyme inhibitor’s role in gonorrhoea infection,” Dr Sikora said.
“Together, all of our experiments show how important the lysozyme inhibitor is. This is very exciting.”
Gonorrhoea, if untreated, may cause infertility. Regular screening, therefore can help detect instances when an infection is present despite having no symptoms.
Symptoms include painful urination and abnormal discharge from the penis or vagina. Men may experience testicular pain and women may experience pain in the lower stomach. In some cases, gonorrhoea has no symptoms.
