REVIEW article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Infectious Agents and Disease
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1638925
Detection of Virulence Factors in Opportunistic Bacteria: Advances, Challenges, and Practical Implementation
Provisionally accepted
- Smolensk State Medical University, Smolensk, Russia
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Virulence is a property of bacteria that determines the degree of damage inflicted on humans. In modern medicine, there is an underestimation of the importance of testing the virulence of opportunistic pathogens to assess prognosis, optimize therapy, and evaluate the risk of developing probable complications of the infectious process. This review analyzes the basic characteristics of virulence, including multifactoriality, complex regulation, its relationship with fitness and bet-hedging in the context of choosing optimal methods for quantitative virulence testing. The possibilities of various methodological approaches for evaluation of virulence in clinical laboratory settings are considered. Current technology levels allow laboratories to be equipped with test systems for implementing methods to detect the virulence of clinical opportunistic isolates. At the hospital level, determining the virulence of isolates from individual patients will improve the prediction of the course of the infectious process and help to rationalize infection control based on principles similar to those used in combating antibiotic-resistant strains. Knowledge of virulence properties of relevant pathogen clones is required for the successful development of anti-virulence strategies.
Keywords: Bacterial infection, Human opportunistic pathogen, virulence mechanisms, detectionof virulence factors, bacterial fitness
Received: 31 May 2025; Accepted: 03 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Chebotar, Azizov, Edelstein and Kozlov. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Igor Chebotar, Smolensk State Medical University, Smolensk, Russia
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