Immunological cross-reactivity of heat-labile enterotoxins produced by enterotoxigenic and enteropathogenic strains of Escherichia coli.

Weanling rats were immunized with a heat-labile enterotoxin contained in whole cell lysate (WCL) ultrafiltrate preparations of enteropathogenic (EPEC) and enterotoxigenic (ETEC) strains or with a purified preparation of heat-labile toxin (LT) from the ETEC strain and then challenged either with viable bacteria of each strain or the purified ETEC LT by means of the ileal ligated loop technique. Immunization with the WCL toxin preparations of either the EPEC or ETEC strain conferred protection against challenge with viable organisms of both strains; immunization with a similar preparation from a nontoxigenic strain did not yield protection. Immunization with either the WCL or purified LT toxin from ETEC strain afforded protection against challenge with the ETEC LT toxin, but immunization with the EPEC WCL preparation did not. The antigenicity of all of the toxin preparations was destroyed by heat-treatment. Possible contributory protective effects of somatic or colonization factor (CFA) antigens present in the WCL were excluded by the findings that protection was afforded against a heterologous somatic serotype, ileal bacterial counts were not reduced in protected animals, and WCL preparations of strains containing or lacking CFA yielded equal protection. These observations indicate that the heat-labile enterotoxin of EPEC strains is antigenic and is immunologically related to a heat-labile toxin present in similarly prepared material from an ETEC strain but not to the conventional LT toxin of ETEC strains. They suggest that the WCL preparation of the ETEC strain contains two heat-labile enterotoxins, one of which is conventional LT and the other of which resembles the EPEC toxin.