Endovascular presence of Chlamydia pneumoniae DNA is a generalized phenomenon in atherosclerotic vascular disease

Increased prevalence of Chlamydophila pneumoniae but not Epstein–Barr antibodies in essential hypertensives

“…26,27 In addition, some investigators support that the detection of C. pneumoniae antibodies may be a poor guide to the presence of infection. 28 As a consequence of the above limitations, it is generally accepted that, for C. pneumoniae, serology is a seriously flawed tool, since it cannot provide high precision. Additionally, the lack of the performance standardizations and the variety of the cutoff titres have made the comparison of data from different laboratories quite difficult.…”

Chlamydia pneumoniae and atherosclerosis. Identification of bacterial DNA in the arterial wall

“…Maass et al 14 found 21% (51/238) positivity for Chlamydia pneumoniae in atheromatous tissues of various parts of the body (thoracic aorta during revascularization procedures, carotid endarterectomy, correction of aortic aneurysms, and revascularization of lower limbs). In addition, the authors showed the viability of the microorganism in 16% of the arterial samples examined.…”

“…The association of Chlamydia pneumoniae and coronary, carotid, and peripheral arterial disease has been described in several countries in diverse types of studies as follows: a) serum-epidemiological studies [2][3][4][5][6] ; b) anatomicopathological studies [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] ; and c) experimental studies [18][19][20][21][22] . Reports on cultivation of Chlamydia pneumoniae in fragments of arteries exist, showing the viability of the bacterium and its multiplication capacity in that type of environment 10,12 .…”

Chlamydophila pneumoniae

“…The culture of C. pneumoniae from atheromatous tissue has only rarely been achieved [25][26][27] , which may be because it is in a latent phase with low metabolic activity, generating forms that are difficult to culture.…”

“…Some researchers regularly recovered viable C. pneumoniae [20,27] , whereas other groups reported low isolation indices [37,38] . The use of culture to detect C. pneumoniae is problematic due to the difficulty of C. pneumoniae growth in cell culture, especially from vascular tissue samples [32] .…”