ArticlePLoS pathogens2017
Transient microbiota exposures activate dormant Escherichia coli infection in the bladder and drive severe outcomes of recurrent disease.
Article in PLoS pathogens, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 80 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
80 citing papers in PubMed, 118 citations in OpenAlex.
- Genitourinary microbiota in older women: a persistent knowledge gap that limits clinical and research progress.Infection and immunity · 2026Review
- Vaginal microbiomes and their pertinent social context: a microbial ecological review proffering AMR-STI acquisition and emergence.Biology of sex differences · 2026Review
- Selective Human-Milk-Inspired Antimicrobial Peptides for the Treatment of Bacterial Vaginosis.Pharmaceutics · 2026Article
- Underexplored maternal microbiomes: immune, metabolic, and microbial pathways shaping pregnancy outcomes.Infection and immunity · 2026Review
- How Does Biological Sex Impact Mucosal Bacterial Infection? Mucosal Defenses and Bacterial Detection.Immunological reviews · 2026Review
- Strain-level heterogeneity in Gardnerella urinary tract persistence and pathogenesis in an in vivo model is consistent with comparative phylogenomic analyses.BMC microbiology · 2026Article
- More than an infection: the ecological puzzle of recurrent urinary tract infections.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Review
- Article
- 3D-Bioprinted Urinary Catheters Enable Sustained Probiotic Recovery Under Flow and Improve Bladder Colonization In Vivo.Probiotics and antimicrobial proteins · 2025Article
- Association of substance use and vaginal infection with UTI in adolescent pregnant patients: a retrospective study.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2025Article
- Strain-level differences inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Social, microbial, and immune factors linking bacterial vaginosis and infectious diseases.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2025Review
- The role of urine microbiota in culture-negative patients with pyuria.World journal of urology · 2025Article
- Pneumocystis jirovecii is a potential pivotal ecological driver contributing to shifts in microbial equilibrium during the early-life lower airway microbiome assembly.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Antibacterial compounds against non-growing and intracellular bacteria.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2025Article
- Urinary tract infections: pathogenesis, host susceptibility and emerging therapeutics.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2025Review
- Microbiota analysis of perimenopausal women experiencing recurrent vaginitis in conjunction with urinary tract infection.BMC microbiology · 2025Article
- An Overview of the Association of the Urinary Tract Microbiome with Various Diseases and Implications for Therapeutics.Mini reviews in medicinal chemistry · 2025Review
- Preclinical validation of electrospun fibers to achieve vaginal colonization byFrontiers in bacteriology · 2025Article
- Nur77 protects the bladder urothelium from intracellular bacterial infection.Nature communications · 2024Article
20 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Pathogens often inhabit the body asymptomatically, emerging to cause disease in response to unknown triggers. In the bladder, latent intracellular Escherichia coli reservoirs are regarded as likely origins of recurrent urinary tract infection (rUTI), a problem affecting millions of women worldwide. However, clinically plausible triggers that activate these reservoirs are unknown. Clinical studies suggest that the composition of a woman's vaginal microbiota influences her susceptibility to rUTI, but the mechanisms behind these associations are unclear. Several lines of evidence suggest that the urinary tract is routinely exposed to vaginal bacteria, including Gardnerella vaginalis, a dominant member of the vaginal microbiota in some women. Using a mouse model, we show that bladder exposure to G. vaginalis triggers E. coli egress from latent bladder reservoirs and enhances the potential for life-threatening outcomes of the resulting E. coli rUTI. Transient G. vaginalis exposures were sufficient to cause bladder epithelial apoptosis and exfoliation and interleukin-1-receptor-mediated kidney injury, which persisted after G. vaginalis clearance from the urinary tract. These results support a broader view of UTI pathogenesis in which disease can be driven by short-lived but powerful urinary tract exposures to vaginal bacteria that are themselves not "uropathogenic" in the classic sense. This "covert pathogenesis" paradigm may apply to other latent infections, (e.g., tuberculosis), or for diseases currently defined as noninfectious because routine culture fails to detect microbes of recognized significance.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.