Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Changes in dog immune cells during leishmaniasis treatment
By Miranda, Sonia et al.·Published in Veterinary parasitology·2007·Departament de Medicina i Cirurgia Animals, Spain·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Characterization of circulating lymphocyte subpopulations in canine leishmaniasis throughout treatment with antimonials and allopurinol.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of 28 dogs diagnosed with canine leishmaniasis (a parasitic disease) were treated with a medication called meglumine antimoniate for one month, followed by allopurinol for a year. Throughout the treatment, researchers looked at different types of immune cells in the dogs' blood to see if they could predict how well the dogs would respond to therapy. They found that the immune cell counts in dogs with leishmaniasis were similar to those in healthy dogs, and these counts did not help predict how well the dogs would do with treatment. Ultimately, the study concluded that immune cell levels aren't reliable indicators of recovery in these cases.
People also search for: dog leishmaniasis treatment · canine leishmaniasis symptoms · allopurinol for dogs · dog immune system response leishmaniasis
Abstract
Canine leishmaniasis (CL) is a systemic parasitic disease with a wide variability of response to specific therapy: the majority of patients apparently improve with treatment, some of them respond but later relapse, and few of them do not respond at all. It has been demonstrated that the immune response plays a key role in the development and outcome of Leishmania infection in the dog and in the response to the treatment, although this response is not well understood. Some authors have suggested that ill dogs show a reduction in the percentage of circulating CD4+ lymphocytes and in the CD4+/CD8+ ratio, both of which normalize after treatment and clinical recovery. The present paper discusses the variation of the different lymphocyte subpopulations (CD3, CD4, CD8, CD21) of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) in 28 dogs diagnosed with CL and submitted to conventional treatment with meglumine antimoniate (Glucantime) for 1 month and with allopurinol (Zyloric) for 1 year, in order to evaluate the usefulness of these parameters as indicators of the immunological condition of the ill animals and of the prognosis of their evolution during the treatment. It is concluded that circulating lymphocyte subpopulations are similar in dogs with leishmaniasis and in healthy dogs and that there is no correlation between the clinical status or response to therapy and the values of the counts of the different lymphocyte subpopulations. Therefore, the percentage of different lymphocyte subpopulations cannot be used as a parameter to predict the evolution of an individual patient in a clinical context.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17110042/