Acinetobacter baumannii
From DrugPedia: A Wikipedia for Drug discovery
Acinetobacter baumannii
It is a species of pathogenic bacteria, referred to as an aerobic gram-negative bacterium, which is resistant to most antibiotics.
| Kingdom | Bacteria |
|---|---|
| Phylum | Proteobacteria |
| Class | Gammaproteobacteria |
| Order | Pseudomonadales |
| Family | Moraxellaceae |
| Genus | Acinetobacter |
| Species | A. baumannii |
| Binomial | Acinetobacter baumannii |
Pathogenic Activity
Acinetobacter baumannii is the most relevant human pathogen within the Acinetobacter genus. As a result of its resistance to drug treatment, some estimates state the disease is killing tens of thousands of U.S. hospital patients each year and specialists say "they could emerge as a bigger threat." It forms opportunistic infections. Multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii is abbreviated as MDRAB. Multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter is not a new phenomenon; it has always been inherently resistant to multiple antibiotics. It causes a wide variety of serious infections in humans, mostly in compromised patients. Recently, A. baumannii has emerged as an important pathogen among wounded soldiers, threatening civilian and military patients.
Virulence
This opportunistic pathogen expresses a myriad of factors that could play a role in human pathogenesis. Some of the factors are: the attachment to and persistence on solid surfaces, the acquisition of essential nutrients such as iron, the adhesion to epithelial cells and their subsequent killing by apoptosis, and the production and/or secretion of enzymes and toxic products that damage host tissues. However, very little is known about the molecular nature of most of these processes and factors and almost nothing has been shown with regard to their role in bacterial virulence and the pathogenesis of serious infectious diseases. Fortunately, some of these gaps can now be filled by testing appropriate isogenic derivatives in relevant animal models that mimic the infections in humans, particularly the outcome of deadly pneumonia. Such an approach should provide new and relevant information on the virulence traits of this normally underestimated bacterial human pathogen.
