Pneumonia and the iron connection.

This is how pneumonia affects the body; A new research has found that iron in the blood is targeted by the bacteria as a way to spread around the body as iron is essential for the bacteria to grow. The study published in the mBio journal research has shown that some strands of the pneumonia bacteria use iron to spread the disease round the body.This discovery could be used to inform how antibiotics can target the bacteria and prevent it spreading. Scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School discovered that the race for iron increases the risk we can face from Klebisella.pneumoniae, a bacteria that commonly causes pneumonia in patients in hospital. It also causes bloodstream, wound and urinary tract infections. When a body is infected with pneumonia, there is a competition for iron that both the bacteria and the host need for essential cellular processes. The study detailed how the k. pneumoniae sends out tiny iron-scavenging molecules, called siderophores, to grab the iron and potentially cause infection. The Siderophores are used as a soldiers to acquire iron for bacterial growth: they are secreted by the bacteria, they grab a molecule of iron from the host, and return to the cell to provide it as a nutrient. The siderophores from k. pneumoniae are hundreds of times more powerful at grabbing iron than the proteins that our own bodies produce,thus allowing the molecules to invade the rest of the body beyond their initial point of entry to bring on inflammation caused by the human immune system. The bacterium has evolved new ways to get iron, and the mechanism it uses also causes cellular stress during infections, as that response triggers an immune response that tells our bodies to fight the infection, but it also activates a mechanism that allows bacteria to escape and travel to the rest of the body. This mechanism that allows the bacteria to travel around the body is called HIF-1alpha, and is normally used in a positive way to help our bodies respond to low oxygen or low iron, but when it is activated by the k. pneumoniae siderophores, it worsens the infection. The researchers discovered the role that siderophores play in the infection by working out how to create bacteria that would not reproduce, while still producing siderophores.