“…It has been suggested that the virulence of C. difficile strains is Clostridium difficile flagellin not solely attributable to toxin production ; other factors such as presence of flagella could contribute to virulence. The role of flagella in microbial pathogenesis factors such as virulence, adherence, invasiveness or colonization has been demonstrated for numerous bacteria (Grant et al, 1993 ;Scherer et al, 1993 ;Zhang et al, 1993 ;Grossman et al, 1995 ;Pruckler et al, 1995 ;Tamura et al, 1995 ;Milton et al, 1996 ;Mobley, 1996 ;Bosshardt et al, 1997 ;Kennedy et al, 1997 ;Rosalski et al, 1997 ;West et al, 1997 ;Feldman et al, 1998). In our experiments in vitro, no inhibition of adherence was shown with antibodies against the recombinant flagellum subunit.…”