A large proportion of a variety
of gastric disorders occurring in the industrialized countries have
been attributed to infections caused by Helicobacter pylori, a Gram
negative curved bacillary organism. However, a Gram positive coccoid
strain was recently isolated from biopsy material obtained from
patients in Korea suffering from gastritis. A prototype isolate,
designated strain SLIOO, infects porcine gastric antrunt and has
an adhesin specific for gastric mucin. We purified the urease of
this strain and found that it has a subunit composition, Krn for
urea, and relative abundance as a percentage of total cell protein,
that is more similar to the urease of H. pylori than other microbial
ureases. We recently found that 20% of a randomly selected group
of ulcer patients in the New York City area who are not infected
with H. pylori have high titers of antibodies that react specifically
in an ELISA with the urease purified from strain SLIOO. The goals
of this proposal are to improve the relatively inefficient methods
we initially devised for lysis of this coccus, adapt our conventional
purification system to a PerSeptive Biosystems HPLC Workstation,
and optimize the conditions used in the ELISA we developed to screen
patient and control sera. |
