J Clin Microbiol 2006, 44:2626–2629.CrossRefPubMed 62. Vial PA, Mathewson JJ, Guers L, Levine MM, DuPont HL: Comparison of two assay

methods for patterns of adherence to HEp-2 cells of Escherichia coli from patients with diarrhea. J Clin Microbiol 1990, 28:882–885.PubMed 63. Iida K, Mizunoe Y, Wai SN, Yoshida S: Type 1 fimbriation and its phase switching in diarrheagenic Escherichia coli strains. Clin Diagn Lab Immunol 2001, this website 8:489–495.PubMed Authors’ contributions SMT and MT contributed to the design of the study, performed the PCR and assays and contributed to the preparation of the manuscript. KA, AB and VBW performed the hybridisation, haemagglutination and tissue culture assays and contributed to the preparation of the manuscript. WQ and TSW interpreted the raw MSLT data and contributed to the preparation of the manuscript. RMRB conceived and designed the study and oversaw the preparation of the manuscript. All authors read and approved

the final manuscript.”
“Background MLN2238 mouse Under normal conditions, the lower female genital tract harbours a mutualistic microflora that primarily consists of lactobacilli which confer antimicrobial protection to the vagina as a critical port of entry for local, ascending and systemic infectious disease [1, 2]. The lactobacilli-driven defence of the vaginal niche is in its essence seized as a principle of colonisation resistance, i.e. the vaginal lactobacilli prevent colonisation of the vaginal epithelium by other microorganisms, through a variety of mechanisms [3]. Despite their intrinsic antimicrobial potential however, vaginal lactobacilli fail to retain dominance in a considerable number of women, resulting in overgrowth very of the vaginal epithelium by other bacteria, as observed, most typically, with anaerobic

polymicrobial overgrowth in bacterial vaginosis [1], or less commonly, with overgrowth by streptococci, including group A [4] and group B streptococci [5, 6], by bifidobacteria [7, 8], or by coliforms such as E. coli [5, 6, 9]. Loss of the indigenous lactobacilli strongly predisposes to ascending genital tract infection, which in pregnancy is a major cause of chorioamnionitis, amniotic fluid infection, and preterm birth [1, 2]. A depletion of the vaginal Lactobacillus microflora further predisposes to the acquisition of sexually transmitted infectious diseases such as gonorrhoea [10, 11], chlamydiosis [11], and HIV infection [12, 13]. The mechanisms involved in the loss of the mutualistic lactobacilli remain largely unknown and hence it remains elusive whether lactobacilli for some reason are losing ground thereby allowing other microorganisms to EX 527 mouse proliferate or whether other bacteria for some reason elicit overgrowth thereby displacing the resident lactobacilli.