TY - JOUR AU - Elfaki, Mohamed G. AU - Alaidan, Alwaleed Abdullah AU - Al-Hokail, Abdullah Abdulrahman PY - 2015/07/30 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Host response to Brucella infection: review and future perspective JF - The Journal of Infection in Developing Countries JA - J Infect Dev Ctries VL - 9 IS - 07 SE - Reviews DO - 10.3855/jidc.6625 UR - https://jidc.org/index.php/journal/article/view/26230118 SP - 697-701 AB - <p class="SmallText">Brucellosis is a zoonotic and contagious infectious disease caused by infection with <em>Brucella </em>species. The infecting brucellae are capable of causing a devastating multi-organ disease in humans with serious health complications. The pathogenesis of <em>Brucella</em> infection is influenced largely by host factors, <em>Brucella</em> species/strain, and the ability of invading brucellae to survive and replicate within mononuclear phagocytic cells, preferentially macrophages (Mf). Consequently, the course of human infection may appear as an acute fatal or progress into chronic debilitating infection with periodical episodes that leads to bacteremia and death. The existence of brucellae inside Mf represents one of the strategies used by <em>Brucella</em> to evade the host immune response and is responsible for treatment failure in certain human populations treated with anti-<em>Brucella</em> drugs. Moreover, the persistence of brucellae inside Mf complicates the diagnosis and may affect the host cell signaling pathways with consequent alterations in both innate and adaptive immune responses. Therefore, there is an urgent need to pursue the development of novel drugs and/or vaccine targets against human brucellosis using high throughput technologies in genomics, proteomics, and immunology.</p> ER -