Characteristics and Intracellular Life of Brucella Organism: A Review

Abstract

Brucella is a Gram-negative, facultative intracellular bacteria that causes zoonotic brucellosis in humans and various animals. These pathogens are affecting domestic animals (cattle, goat, sheep, pig, dogs and camel), human and wild animals. Humans are accidental hosts of brucellosis acquiring the infection commonly from contact with infected animals, aborted materials and consumption raw milk. Brucella do not produce classical virulence factors, and their capacity to successfully replicate within a variety of host cells, to persist for prolonged periods within host cells and to evade the host immune response at the same time underlies their pathogenicity. The virulence factors of Brucella are involved in intracellular survival and replication within mononuclear phagocytic cells, preferentially macrophages in the host and hampers the intracellular trafficking and ability to prevent recognition by the host defense system. All these comprehensions of Brucella can inhabit inside the phagocytes of infected host to promote their survival, persistence and multiplication.