Construction and characterization of Aeromonas hydrophila crp and fur deletion mutants and evaluation of its potential as live-attenuated vaccines in crucian carp.

Aeromonas hydrophila (A. hydrophila) is a typical zoonotic pathogenic bacterium that infects humans, animals, and fish. It has been reported that the Fur, a Fe2+ regulatory protein, and the Crp, a cAMP receptor protein, play important roles in bacterial virulence in many bacteria, but no research has been investigated on A. hydrophila. In this study, the Δfur and Δcrp mutant strains were constructed by the suicide plasmid method. These two mutant strains exhibited a slightly diminished bacterial growth and also were observed some alterations in the number of outer membrane proteins, and the disappearance of hemolysis in the Δcrp strain. Animal experiments of crucian carp showed that the Δfur and Δcrp mutant strains significantly decreased virulence compared to the wild-type strain, and both mutant strains were able to induce good immune responses by two kinds of administration routes of intraperitoneal immunization (i.p) and immersion immunization, and the protection rates through intraperitoneal injection of Δfur and Δcrp to crucian carp were as high as 83.3 % and 73.3 %, respectively, and immersion immunization route of Δfur and Δcrp to crucian carp provided protection as high as 40 % and 20 %, respectively. These two mutant strains showed abilities to induce changes in enzymatic activities of the non-specific enzymes SOD, LZM, AKP, and ACP in crucian carp. Together, these results indicated the Δfur and Δcrp mutants were safe and effective candidate vaccine strains, showing good protection against the wild-type A. hydrophila challenge.

Correlation between serum ß2-microglobulin level and systemic lupus erythematosus disease activity: A PRISMA-compliant meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Numerous studies have explored whether serum beta 2-microglobulin (ß2-MG) can be used as a biomarker for monitoring systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) disease activity, but the results are conflicting. Therefore, we performed a systematic meta-analysis to further investigate the correlation between serum ß2-MG level and SLE disease activity. METHODS: PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and CNKI databases were thoroughly searched for eligible studies through April 2022. Standardized mean differences with 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) were used to depict the differences in serum ß2-MG levels between groups compared in the studies. The correlation between serum ß2-MG level and SLE disease activity was assessed using Fisher z-values. RESULTS: Sixteen articles with combined 1368 SLE patients were included in this meta-analysis. Serum ß2-MG levels were significantly higher in SLE patients than in healthy controls (pooled standardized mean difference: 3.98, 95% CI: 2.50-5.46, P < .01). In addition, patients with active SLE had an increased serum ß2-MG concentration compared to their inactive SLE counterparts. Furthermore, a positive correlation was observed between serum ß2-MG levels and SLE disease activity (pooled Fisher z = 0.78, 95% CI: 0.61-0.96, P < .01). CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that patients with SLE have higher serum ß2-MG levels than healthy controls and that serum ß2-MG levels are positively correlated with SLE disease activity. Thus, serum ß2-MG level may be a promising biomarker for monitoring SLE disease activity.