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. 1980 Oct;30(1):272–280. doi: 10.1128/iai.30.1.272-280.1980

Interactions of human neutrophils with leukotoxic streptococci.

G W Sullivan, G L Mandell
PMCID: PMC551304  PMID: 7002789

Abstract

Most strains of Streptococcus pyogenes contain a toxin which can kill neutrophils. Previous workers failed to show any correlation between leukotoxin content and virulence of animals or humans. We examined the in vitro interactions of a leukotoxic streptococcus and a nonleukotoxic variant with human neutrophils. At ratios of 200 streptococcal colony-forming units per neutrophil, the toxic strain killed 92.8 +/- 2.0% of neutrophils, and the nontoxic strain killed only 9.0 +/- 1.2%. Despite this, ingestion of the two strains was equal. Postphagocytic oxidative metabolism was equivalent with low numbers of either toxic or nontoxic streptococci but depressed with high numbers of leukotoxic streptococci. At 20 min, neutrophils were able to kill leukotoxic (99.6 +/- 0.3% killed) and nonleukotoxic streptococci (99.5 +/- 0.2% killed) equally efficiently (P = 0.42). Thus, leukotoxicity does not interfere with the ability of neutrophils to destroy streptococci. This may explain why leukotoxicity does not appear to be an important factor in streptococcal virulence.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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