Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Tracking immune gene changes and parasite levels in dogs
By Sanchez-Robert, E et al.·Published in Veterinary immunology and immunopathology·2008·Department of Animal and Food Science, Spain·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Longitudinal analysis of cytokine gene expression and parasite load in PBMC in Leishmania infantum experimentally infected dogs.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of six dogs infected with the Leishmania parasite were monitored over a year to understand how their immune response affected the disease. Two of the dogs showed no signs of illness and had low parasite levels, while the other four developed serious symptoms due to high parasite loads. The study found that the dogs that got sick had early signs of certain immune markers, which were not present in the healthy dogs. This suggests that the immune response can vary greatly among dogs, and it’s not always possible to predict how an individual dog will respond to the infection.
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Abstract
Canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL) is caused by Leishmania infantum, an intracellular protozoan parasite that causes a severe infectious disease. To evaluate the gene expression profile associated to CVL in vivo, we have measured monthly by real-time PCR over one year the IL-4, IL-10, IL-12, IL-13, IFN-gamma, TGF-beta and TNF-alpha mRNA levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells in 6 experimentally infected dogs that exhibited different progressions of the illness. While in two dogs no parasite, or a very low number of parasites, was detected and the two dogs did not show any clinico-pathological abnormalities at the end of the study (L dogs), for the remaining dogs high parasite loads were detected and they developed clinical leishmaniasis (H dogs). The L dogs have null expression of both IL-4 and IL-13 for the first 4 months after the infection, whereas an early IL-4 and IL-13 expression occurs in this period of infection in most of the dogs that developed clinical leishmaniasis (H dogs). Furthermore, a higher IFN-gamma expression was associated with the increase of parasite load and clinical status in these dogs. Moreover, the high variability of expression at the pre-infection stage causes us to reject the possibility that the basal levels of these cytokines indicate the prognosis of the subsequent response against infection.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18514330/