Complement Resistance Assays

Like many other pathogens of medical importance, pathogenic Leptospira employ diverse strategies to circumvent Complement System activation. Under physiological conditions, this central humoral arm of innate immunity is tightly controlled by negative Complement regulatory proteins. However, upon infection, pathogenic microorganisms interfere with normal Complement host defense mechanisms by recruiting or mimicking Complement regulators, and by secreting endogenous proteases or acquiring host's proteases that inactivate key Complement components. In this chapter, we describe in detail some of the most frequently used assays to evaluate Leptospira Complement resistance.