Mechanisms of bacillary dysentery: lessons learnt from infant rabbits

ABSTRACT

The bacterial pathogen Shigella flexneri causes more than 250 million cases of bacillary dysentery (blood in stool) every year across the world. This human-specific disease is characterized by profuse bloody diarrhea, dramatic ulceration of the colonic epithelium and immune cell infiltration of the colonic tissue. A major challenge in understanding the mechanisms supporting bacillary dysentery is the reliance on animal models that do not fully recapitulate the symptoms observed in humans, including bloody diarrhea. Here we outline advances provided by a recently developed infant rabbit model of bacillary dysentery. The infant rabbit model defines bacillary dysentery as a critical combination of massive vascular lesions and dramatic epithelial fenestration due to intracellular infection and cell-to-cell spread, respectively. The infant rabbit model provides an unprecedented framework for understanding how the cell biology of Shigella flexneri infection relates to pathogenesis.

KEYWORDS:

• Shigella flexneri
• bacillary dysentery
• T3SS
• cell-to-cell spread
• rabbit
• epithelial fenestration
• vascular lesion

Acknowledgments

We thank the members of the Agaisse Lab for stimulating discussions. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health grant R01AI073904 (H.A).

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [R01 AI073904].