Chlamydia pneumoniae immunology

Chlamydiae are common pathogens that cause a number of serious but preventable diseases in both humans and animals. In the recent years, Chlamydia pneumoniae has emerged as a major cause of human respiratory disease and more importantly, it has been linked to the establishment and exacerbation of serious chronic diseases including atherosclerosis and ischaemic heart disease, multiple sclerosis and reactive arthritis. There has been a lot of research into host responses to chlamydial infections and the development of immunopathology; but considerable gaps in our knowledge remain. The work described here aimed to analyse the early innate immune responses in the lung following C. pneumoniae infections with a view to better understanding host-pathogen interactions and the role of the earliest immune responses in the establishment of persistence and chronic inflammatory disease.