Specificity of the immune response to Haemophilus ducreyi

The specificity of the antibody response to Haemophilus ducreyi in sera from patients attending a sexually transmitted disease clinic in South Africa has been studied using immunoblotting. Patients with chancroid were shown to have higher levels of IgG (mean 0.74, SD 0.34) to H. ducreyi than those with no history of chancroid (mean 0.34, SD 0.19). The pattern of the antibody specificity was highly variable between patients with culture proven chancroid but there was no observed strain specificity. In comparison, the patterns obtained using sera from patients without known exposure to H. ducreyi showed less variation between patients and were of less intensity at the dilution used. Sera from patients with chancroid recognised epitopes on proteins that varied in molecular weight between strains, particularly of 60-66kDa (10 of 36 patients) and 25-27kDa (8 of 36 patients). In addition epitopes were recognised on the GroEL and/or DnaK heat shock proteins in 13 of 36 sera tested. There was no apparent change in the epitopes recognised on proteins between the homologous and heterologous strains. Patterns of antibody specificity in sequential sera only varied in one of six patients tested.