Relative contribution of three main virulence factors in Pseudomonas aeruginosa pneumonia.

The article analyzes the virulence of 56 nonclonal Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains taken from patients with ventilator-acquired pneumonia in an effort to determine which among these factors is the most important. The authors report that they used a murine model of pneumonia to avoid human immune response variation. They reveal that their experiment showed that type three secretion system and elastase are the most important virulence factors among strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.