Adherence of ovine and human Bordetella parapertussis to continuous cell lines and ovine tracheal organ culture

The adherence of ovine and human isolates of Bordetella parapertussis to ov ine and human continuous culture cell lines and to ovine tracheal organ cul ture was compared. Adherence to non-ciliated respiratory continuous culture cells did not reveal any host-specificity of the isolates. In contrast, ad herence of ovine B. parrpertusis strains to ciliated ovine tracheal organ c ulture was significantly greater than that of human strains. These results indicate that tracheal organ culture is a useful tool for studying host-spe cific adherence of B. parapertussis and suggest that adherence of B. parape rtussis to ciliated epithelia is species-specific making it unlikely that t he transfer of B. parapertussis between humans and sheep will result in an infection. (C) 2001 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Publi shed by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.