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J Med Microbiol,
2013]
Stenotrophomonas maltophilia plays an important role as an opportunistic pathogen in immunocompromised individuals. Despite its clinical implication, the true knowledge regarding the pathogenicity of these bacteria remains unclear. Various methods have been employed to prove this bacterium to be pathogenic. However, the debate whether S. maltophilia is a true pathogen or a colonizer still remains unanswered as effective killing was not seen in earlier experiments with different animal models of infection (Denton et al., 1998; Adamak et al., 2011; Pompilo et al., 2011). Study by Rouf et al. (2011) on murine lung infection model illustrated that different strains of mice exhibited different outcome for S. maltophilia infection. Strains such as A/J and DBA/2 were permissive for clinical isolates of S. maltophilia and showed higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines. In contrast, BALB/c and C57BL/6 strains were non-permissive for S. maltophilia. While Huang et al. (2009) showed nematotoxic activity by environmental S. maltophilia strain against free-living nematode, Panagrellus redivivus, and plant-parasitic nematode, Bursaphelenchus xylophilus.