A study in France has recently managed to uncover the mechanisms that bacteria derived from food can make the leap from pregnant mother to the fetus that was carrying. This finding is believed to pave the way for the creation of an effort to protect the fetus against infection with a potentially fatal.

As proclaimed by Reuters, scientists at the Institute Pasteur in Paris studied Listeria monocytogenes, a pathogen that attacks a type at least 2,500 people per year in the United States and killed about 500 people every year.

Pregnant women have a tendency noted 20 times greater than listeriosis healthy adults. Experienced infection often result in miscarriage and the birth of a baby in a state of death.

Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported the U.S., one of third listeriosis cases occur during pregnancy. They get listeriosis from eating contaminated food. Listeria can be spread from the intestine into the blood vessels. But so far, the experts can not express clearly how these bacteria can pass the placental barrier and into the fetus.

The team led by Marc Lecuit studied listeria in gerbils and rats and found two types of proteins in bacteria, In1A and In1B, which is required for listeria to cross the placenta barrier and infect the fetus.

Lecuit and his team who publishes his findings in the journal Nature suspect, by blocking one or both of these pathways will allow a mother to prevent transmitting the infection to her fetus. Not only attack pregnant women, listeriosis also affects the elderly, newborns, and adults who have weak immune systems.

Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, and sometimes nausea or diarrhea. If infection spreads to the nervous system, patients will experience symptoms such as headaches, confusion, loss of balance or convulsions.