Testing meningococcal vaccines for mitogenicity and superantigenicity.

Proteins with intrinsic mitogenic properties are widely represented in prokaryotes, such as in different Streptococcus species (1-3), Candida albicans (4), and Eikenella corrodens (5). Specifically, several bacterial porins of Escherichia coli, Shigella dysenteriae, Salmonella typhimurium, Fusobacterium nucleatum, and pathogenic Neisseria species have been shown to induce nonspecific proliferation of lymphocytes (6-12).