Affiliation:
1. Division of Biological and Medical Research, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439
Abstract
Mycoplasma pulmonis
, an etiological agent of murine pneumonia, produced about 0.065 μmoles of hydrogen peroxide (H
2
O
2
) per hr per 10
10
colony-forming units. When glucose was present at a concentration of 0.01
m
, H
2
O
2
production was increased by 50%. To determine if H
2
O
2
production by
M. pulmonis
could be correlated with virulence, normal, acatalasemic, and acatalatic mice were infected with the organism. Three days after infection with
M. pulmonis
significantly more acatalatic mice had pneumonia than did normal or acatalasemic mice. The pneumonia in acatalatic mice was also more severe than in the other two groups. Five days after infection, pneumonia in the acatalatic mice was resolved, whereas normal mice were severely affected. The presence of pneumonia and the severity were correlated with the recovery of
M. pulmonis
from the lesions. In vitro studies of the effect of catalase on
M. pulmonis
showed that exogenously supplied catalase stimulated the growth of
M. pulmonis
at 37 C and prolonged its survival at 25 C. Hemolysis of sheep blood, guinea pig blood, rabbit blood, and normal and acatalasemic mouse blood by
M. pulmonis
was inversely related to the catalase activity of the erythrocytes. These findings suggest that H
2
O
2
secretion contributes to the virulence of
M. pulmonis
and to the death of the microorganism in the absence of host catalase.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Molecular Biology,Microbiology
Cited by
37 articles.
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