Bladder surface mucin. Its antibacterial effect against various bacterial species

Abstract

We previously reported the results of quantitative and histochemical studies implicating the surface mucin of the bladder mucosa as an important antibacterial defense mechanism, which functions by preventing bacteria from adhering to the bladder wall. We call the mucin "anti-adherence factor" and we feel this is a previously undocumented role for mucin as a type of host antibacterial defense. These experiments were conduced with Escherichia coli. In an effort to determine whether the anti-adherence ability of the vesical mucin was a generalized phenomenon, we repeated these studies using unrelated bacterial species, including E coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Staphylococcus aureus. The ability of the vesical mucosa to resist bacterial adherence to its surface was found to be independent of the bacterial species that was investigated.