JCR and ADC supervised the work and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) is a leading cause of infantile diarrhoea in developing countries [1]. Net secretory diarrhoea results from altered host cell signaling events, loosening of tight junctions and is exacerbated by the destruction of absorptive tissue, the host intestinal microvilli [2]. These phenotypes are mediated by a type III secretion

system, a molecular Selleckchem NVP-HSP990 syringe that secretes bacterial proteins into host cells, and is a common feature of many gram-negative pathogens [3]. The mechanism of EPEC diarrhoeal disease is similar to that of enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC), and thus EPEC can be used as a surrogate for investigating disease caused by this more serious threat to selleck chemicals public health. While, by learn more definition, EPEC, possesses no diffusible toxins, EHEC in contrast produces Shiga toxin, causing bloody diarrhoea or hemorrhagic colitis. The production of Shiga toxin also can lead to the life-threatening complication, hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), which occurs in approximately 10% of reported cases of EHEC infection [4]. In developing countries, studies have shown that administering zinc to children with diarrhoea reduces the severity of disease [5, 6]. It was initially hypothesized that this effect was due to correction of zinc deficiencies

often seen in impoverished and malnourished children in these regions of the world. Certainly zinc is an important nutrient due to its fundamental role as a cofactor – over 300 zinc-depedent enzymes have been identified from all forms of life, with many of these such as carbonic anhydrase forming a basic part of human metabolism. Zinc is also found in non-enzymatic

contexts in humans, for example its structural role in the ubiquitous zinc finger transcriptional regulators [7]. Zinc is also important for immune function, and zinc deficiency adversely affects the health and development of children [8, 9]. However, a double-blind, Clomifene randomized, controlled study involving 937 children with acute diarrhoea conducted in New Delhi, India demonstrated that zinc supplementation benefited children in the experimental group irrespective of the child’s initial plasma zinc level [5]. Thus beyond being an important co-factor necessary for immune and enzyme function in children, zinc also reduces the duration and severity of diarrhoeal disease caused by E. coli. For an initial study conducted in Calcutta, many, but not all of the reported cases were caused by EPEC. Thus some researchers have argued for greater use of zinc supplementation to treat bacterial diarrhoeal disease in children in the developing world [10]. In EPEC, zinc causes a reduction in net protein secretion via the type III secretion system [11], encoded within the pathogenicity island termed the locus of enterocyte effacement or LEE.