Coating and Corruption of Human Neutrophils by Bacterial Outer Membrane Vesicles
Marines du Teil Espina, Yanyan Fu, Demi van der Horst, Claudia Hirschfeld, Marina López‐Álvarez, Lianne M. Mulder, Costanza Gscheider, Anna Haider Rubio, Minke G. Huitema, Dörte Becher, Peter Heeringa, Jan Maarten van Dijl
Abstract
Severe periodontitis is a dysbiotic inflammatory disease that affects about 15% of the adult population, making it one of the most prevalent diseases worldwide. Importantly, periodontitis has been associated with the development of nonoral diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, pancreatic cancer, and Alzheimer's disease. Periodontal pathogens implicated in periodontitis can survive in the oral cavity only by avoiding the insults of neutrophils while at the same time promoting an inflamed environment where they successfully thrive. Our present findings show that outer membrane vesicles secreted by the keystone pathogen Porphyromonas gingivalis provide an effective delivery tool of virulence factors that protect the bacterium from being killed while simultaneously activating human neutrophils.