Letter to the Editor

Real-time PCR for Quantification of Helicobacter felis in Mouse Stomach

Authors: Rodolfo E. Bégué, MD, Jennifer Manning, BSN, Hernán Correa, MD

Abstract

Helicobacter pylori is the most common cause of chronic bacterial infections, affecting at least 50% of the world's population and leading to gastritis, peptic ulcer disease and gastric adenocarcinoma. Development of a vaccine to control this infection has become a priority, and preclinical testing of potential products includes inoculation of mice with H felis and determination of the number of bacteria in the stomach.1 Since the traditional quantitative culture technique is laborious,2 we—as well as others3,4—have developed a real-time polymerase chain reaction (Q-PCR) for this task. Here, we describe our assay.

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References

1. Del Giudice G, Covacci A, Telford JL, et al. The design of vaccines against Helicobacter pylori and their development. Annu Rev Immunol 2001;19:523–553.
 
2. Atherton JC, Tham KT, Peek RM, et al. Density of Helicobacter pylori infection in vivo as assessed by quantitative culture and histology. J Infect Dis 1996;174:552–556.
 
3. Jiang W, Baker HJ, Smith BF. Mucosal immunization with Helicobacter, CpG DNA, and cholera toxin is protective. Infect Immun 2003;71:40–46.
 
4. Stoicov C, Whary M, Rogers AB, et al. Coinfection modulates inflammatory responses and clinical outcome of Helicobacter felis and Toxoplasma gondii infections. J Immunol 2004;173:3329–3336.
 
5. Sutton P, Wilson J, Lee A. Further development of the Helicobacter pylori mouse vaccination model.Vaccine 2000;18:2677–2685.