Adhesion of bacteria to mucosal surfaces—an area of increasing importance in diarrhoeal disease

Conclusion The study of the adhesive interactions between host and microorganisms is likely to have major repercussions in many aspects of the study of infectious diseases. In the field of bacterial diarrhoea, it has already been shown that the ability to adhere to the brush border of the intestinal mucosa is an essential pre-requisite to colonisation of the intestine, thus initiating the chain of events leading to proliferation, enterotoxin production, small-intestinal secretion, and overt diarrhoea. The interruption of this chain of events by a new generation of therapeutic agents which act by inhibiting the adhesion of pathogenic bacteria, or by rendering them non-adhesive with specific IgA, will usher in a new era in the treatment of diarrhoeal disease.Curriculum vitae. David Candy was born in 1947 in the UK. He graduated in 1971 from the Medical School of the University of Adelaide, South Australia. After working with Dr. John Harries in Paediatric Gastroenterology at the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond St., he began full-time research as the Rayne Foundation Research Fellow, in 1977. His topics of research include studies of the pathophysiology of bacterial enterotoxins and adhesion.