STIs Flashcards
What are common features of STIs?
• Shared mode of transmission (sexual)
- =shared mode of prevention
- More than one infectious agent often present (hunt in packs)
- Enhances HIV transmission/acquisition
- Can be asymptomatic and transmissible
- Often persistent infections with significant consequences
- Stigma can prevent treatment, possible eradication
What are the features and examples of bacterial STIs?
- Chlamydia tranchomatis
- Neisseria gonorrhoea
- Treponema pallidum
- Very infectious, easy spread
- Humans only
- Effective antibiotic treatment
- Prevent with condoms
What are part of the Chlamydia genus? Where do they cause infection?
Chlamydia tranchomatis
- Serovars A,B,C – trachoma
- Serovars D-K – conjunctivitis, urogenital tract infections, pneumonitis
- Serovars L1-L3 – lymphogranuloma venereum
Chlamydophila pneumonia – atypical pneumonia
Chlamydophila psittaci – acute respiratory disease
What are features of Chlamydia trachomatis serovars D-K?
- Most common bacterial STI (developed world)
- Many asymptomatic
- Can infect eye • Discharge
- Can ascend upper genital tract cause infection and damage
- Can be passed to newborns
- Persistent infections common
What are features of Chlamydiae bacteria?
- Gram negative
- Small
- Wont detect peptidoglycan in cell wall (no gram stain)
- Observe lymphocyte response
- LPS truncated, not very endo-toxic
- Obligate, intracellular (need host mitochondria for energy)
- Therefore need cell culture
- Slow replication with EB and RB stage
- Damage due to host immune response
What’s involved in the replication cycle of Chlymadiea?
• Slow and 2 development stages (elementary body/EB and reticulate body/RB)
What happens during chlamydia entry, multiplication and spread?
- Elementary body (binds columnar epithelial cells by adhesins, RME
- Endosome with EB doesn’t fuse with lysosome (no destruction). Endosomes fuse to form inclusions
- EB transformed to metabolically active reticulate body. RB replicates in inclusions
- RB converted to EB and EB released
What are EB and RB and how do they differ?
- elementary body = infectious, extracellular particle (no replication, no antimicrobial susceptibility)
- reticulate body = intracellular, replicative, don’t survive outside cells, targeted by microbials but they need to penetrate cell and tissue, If IFNγ present (from T cells, macrophage), prolong RB phase, low grade chronic inflammation and tissue damage
How does chlamydia cause damage?
- Infected epithelial cells, make chemokines so influx of neutrophils, monocytes, DCs, NK cells
- T and B cells activated and accumulate to form follicles
- Continuing activation = chronic inflammation
- Persistent inflammation due to hsp60 from chlamydial
- Recurrent infections
How can chlamydia be diagnosed and treated?
- Swabs, first pass urine specimens
- PCR
- EIA less common
- Tetracycline or macrolide antibiotics
- Good penetration
- Given over prolonged time
• azithromycin
What is the preferred treatment for chlamydia?
• Single dose long acting macrolide/azithromycin ideal
What are the features of Neisseria gonorrhoea?
- Gonorrhoea
- Gram negative diplococcus
- Intracellular mostly
- Likes to grow in Co2 (but not anaerobe)
- Similar clinical presentation to chlamydia
- Symptomatic = urethritis
- Can ascend in females, cause pelvic inflammatory disease (PID)
- Predominately for gays
How does gonorrhoea enter, spread and multiply in us?
- Target columnar epithelial cells like chlamydia
- Attach with adhesins (pili, OM proteins, LPS with no O antigen/lipo-oligosaccharide)
- Cell surface replication • Spread in mucus secretions (pili twitching motility)
- And invade and go to sub-epithelial tissue, Inflammation/dissemination
Why is complement and neutrophil activation poor by gonorrhoea?
• Poor complement/neutrophil activation because altered LPS and lack some OM proteins
How does gonorrhoea cause damage?
- No exotoxins
- Inflammatory response (PRR, LPS, peptidoglycan)
- Pus, pain
- TNF causes loss of ciliated epithelial cells
- Invasive strains avoid complement cascade/neutrophils
- Prolonged infection due to antigenic variation in pili, surface proteins
- Can acquire other genetic material (antibiotic resistance)
How is gonorrhoea diagnosed?
- Culture and gram stain
- PCR
- Microscopy (gram neg diplococcic and polymorphonuclear neutrophils)
What kind of culture is needed for gonorrhoea and why?
- Often normal flora present, need selective enriched medium
- Gonococcus Medium (GN)
- Lysed HBA biplate
- One side antibiotics, selective for Gonococcus
- Culture essential for working out antibiotic susceptibility
How can gonorrhoea be treated?
- Check guidelines
- Beta-lactamase resistant cephalosporin
- Also use azithromycin as 40% have chlamydia too
What causes syphilis? What are the features of this bacterium?
- Treponema pallidum
- Spirochaete family (some normal microflora)
- Slender, spiral rod, need special to visualise
- Motile with contractile flagella
- Labile, easy to inactivate
- Non culturable
- Possible spread from placenta to foetus
- Asymptomatic or symptomatic
What are the stages of syphilis infection and what is involved in each stage?
Infection
- 3 weeks
- Multiply and disseminate into blood/tissue
Primary syphilis
- Local ulcer (chancre)
- Or asymptomatic (2-24 weeks)
- 2-6 weeks – control by immune system, resolution or continuation
Secondary syphilis
- Genital lesions, rashes, warts
- Bacteria localise in tissue to cause symptoms
- Asymptomatic (3-30 years)
- 2-6 weeks – control by immune system, resolution or continuation
Tertiary syphilis
- Targets other important organs
- Multiplication and hypersensitivity response
How long can someone be asymptomatic at each stage of syphilis infection?
- Primary 2-24 weeks
- Secondary 3-30 years
How is syphilis diagnosed?
Dark ground microscopy and PCR rarer
Serology
- Detect antibodies to treponemal antigens
- Rapid plasma reagin test (RPR)
What is the basis of the rapid plasma reagin test?
- Measure abs made against components of damaged cells – cardiolipin
- Very sensitive (not many false negatives)
- Not very specific (some false positives)
- Cheap
- Screening test
- Need confirmation with specific tests, EIA
How is syphilis treated?
- Sensitive to penicillin
- No resistance
- Need to prevent progression
- Need to prevent congenital syphilis (screen pregnant mums)
What is an important feature of viral STIs?
• They are persistent
What are features of the herpesviridae family?
- Large
- Icosahedral
- Enveloped
- Ds DNA, Linear
- Encode array of proteins
- Can be latent in host
- Very common
- Also VZC, glandular fever, roseola
What is the structure of HSV?
- Glycoproteins on outside
- Envelope
o Means virus is labile
o Requires intimate contact
o Transmitted in bodily fluids
• Tegument proteins
o Unique to herpes
o Infection and evasion
• Icosahedral capsid
What are the features of HSV? How can you distinguish HSV 1 and 2?
- Serotypes HSV1 and HSV2
- Distinguish with serological testing (antigen detection) and PCR (gene detection)
- Both cause localised infections and disseminated infections
What disseminated infections can result from HSV?
• meningoencephalitis, encephalitis
How can HSV stay latent?
- Go from epithelial cells to dorsal root ganglia (infect sensory neurons then transported)
- HSV maintained as episome and doesn’t replicate (linear DNA now closed circular)
o = latency
o Genome circularises (episome) in neural cells
o Few viral genes expressed
o Produces latency activated transcript RNAs (but no resultant protein)
o HSV 1 infected ganglia often associated with T cells, cytokine and chemokine’s, suggest immune stimulation
• Reactivation from ganglia = recurrent infections at original site
o Certain stimuli (UV, stress, fever) reactivates from episomal state
o Goes down sensory nerve
o Reactivation at original site
• Rarely, can go from ganglia to CNS instead
How does HSV enter a cell? Why is direct contact required?
- Target cells: epithelial, fibroblasts, macrophage
- Infects skin and mucous membranes
- Direct contact (labile enveloped virus)
- Glycoproteins on envelope
o gpB and gpC
o Bind cell surface receptors (heparan sulphate)
o Binding on it’s own not enough for entry
o Bind triggers fusion of envelope with cell membrane, nucleocapsid released to cytoplasm
How does HSV replicate in epithelial cells?
- Binding, membrane fusion
- Capsid released to cytoplasm, then translocated to nucleus
- Early genes and mRNAs
- Early proteins (non-structural)
- DNA polymerase(replication)
- Thymidine kinase
- ICP47 (Inhibits MHC I presentation and expression)
- DNA synthesis
- Late genes and structural proteins
- Assembly
- Release
How can HSV affect epithelial cells?
- Replication means lots of infectious virus released
- Causes cell death
- Cell to cell spread/infection
- Loss of epithelial cells = lesions/ulcer
- Infection can be asymptomatic
- Transmission whilst symptomatic or asymptomatic
- Can spread to CNS (meningitis etc.) – rare
- Move on to become latent
What are the features of HSV 1 and 2? How are they different?
HSV 1
- Spread by saliva
- Cold sores,
- encephalitis
- 70-80% antibody positive
- 1% asymptomatically secrete
HSV 2
- Spread by genital secretions
- Genital herpes, neonatal herpes
- 12.5-25% antibody positive
- 3% asymptomatically secrete
- Partially protected against by HSV1 antibodies
What are the innate defences against HSV? What is the role of interferon?
- Induced by epithelium infection
- Infected epithelial cells make IFNβ
- PAMP-PRR interactions induce macrophages and DCs to make cytokines (IFNα)
- Type 1 interferons (IFNα/β) protect uninfected cells from virus infection and induce influx/activation of NK cells
- NK cells recognises and bind HSV infected cells, lysis
What are the adaptive responses against HSV?
- T cells important (4 and 8)
- CD4 for helping and activating CD8
- CD8
o Controls HSV replication in skin/mucous/ganglia
o ICP47 production inhibits MHC I presentation and expression
o Specific HSV CD8 found clustered around ganglia without damaging neuron (maintain but don’t control infection)
o Genital lesions: CD8 migration linked with viral clearance
- B cells
- Limited efficiency of antibodies in HSV protection
- Maternal abs can protect against neonatal infection
- Don’t play role as large as T cells
Are B or T cells more important for controlling HSV infection? Why?
- T cells
- Antibodies induced by experimental vaccines not associated with protection
- Antibody deficient patients don’t have worse recurrences
Why can’t HSV be eliminated permanently? Is this true for infections of epithelial cells and neurons?
• Eventually can eliminate in epithelial cells
o Complement, NK cells, T cells (but delayed because of ICP47)
o Lyse infected cells
• Neurons virus persists
o Limited production of viral proteins (episomal state)
o Low levels of neuron MHC I expression
o ICP47 inhibits peptide transport to MHC I