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Nature Medicine 10, 780 - 781 (2004)
doi:10.1038/nm0804-780

Staphylococcal protein A inflames the lungs

Birgitta Henriques Normark1, Staffan Normark1 & Anna Norrby-Teglund1

  1. The authors are at the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control, Solna, the Microbiology and Tumor Biology Center, and the Centre for Infectious Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. e-mail: birgitta.henriques@smi.ki.se

Staphylococcal pneumonia is associated with a huge influx of inflammatory cells into the lungs. A major trigger for this event is now revealed. Protein A, a bacterial surface protein, binds the receptor for TNFalpha, a prominent activator of the innate immune system (pages 842–848).

Staphylococcus aureus colonizes the noses of about 30% of healthy humans, normally without causing disease1. But it can produce severe and sometimes lethal infections in vulnerable individuals.

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