Evidence for Long‐Term Cervical Persistence ofChlamydia trachomatisbyomp1Genotyping

Abstract

Recurrent Chlamydia trachomatis infections are common among sexually active women. Although recurrences with a new chlamydial serovar indicate reinfection, same-serovar recurrences may be due to persistence. Because persistence has important implications for pathogenesis and patient management, we identified 552 women with >3 recurrences over 2 years. Among these, 130 women (24%) had same-serovar recurrences; 58 (45%) were C class serovars (odds ratio, 2.4; 95% confidence interval, 1.7-3.5; P<.0001). Forty-five isolates from 7 women with 3-10 repeated, same-serovar infections over 2-5 years were studied. As determined by omp1 genotyping, 4 women had identical genotypes at each recurrence; 2 women had 1 or 2 amino acid changes following treatment, and one was persistently infected with a unique genotype, Ja. Many intervening culture-negative samples were positive when tested by ligase chain reaction, which suggests persistence. These data demonstrate that cervical infections with C class serovars can persist for years and may have specific biologic properties that allow for modulation of the major outer membrane protein in response to immune selection.

Restriction endonuclease patterns of the omp1 gene of reference Chlamydia trachomatis strains and characterization of isolates from Cameroonian students

“…Sequence analysis found it to be a genotype J strain, with three nucleotide substitutions, in one case involving an AluI restriction site. The omp1 sequence of our triple-mutant J strain was not identical to those of variants Ja and Jv, respectively described by Dean et al (2000) and Morré et al (1998a). The patterns were very reproducible and comparison between clinical and reference patterns was easy.…”

Chlamydia trachomatis Infection Induces Cleavage of the Mitotic Cyclin B1

“…Alternatively, the observation that inclusions are not always transmitted to daughter cells upon cell division (3) suggests that C. trachomatis may have evolved a strategy to safeguard large inclusions until host cell lysis. Finally, it is possible that the effect of C. trachomatis on the host cell cycle is actually most significant during persistent infection, when the bacteria are residing within the cell for extended periods of time (2,7,13,23). Altering the eukaryotic cell cycle actually appears to be an emerging theme for pathogens (33,38).…”

Comparison of three genotyping methods to identify Chlamydia trachomatis genotypes in positive men and women

“…Besides the defined serovar, genovariants have 66 been described including Ja and L2b (7,8). 67 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 3 69 The majority of serovars A, B and C are detected in conjunctival samples of patients in 70 developing countries, while serovars D-K are mostly found in the urogenital tract and 71 proctum and remain confined to the mucosal layer.…”