Brugia malayi in Mastomys coucha: establishment in immunosuppressed animals1

Brugia malayi in Mastomys coucha: establishment in immunosuppressed animals1

Acta Tropica 71 (1998) 189 – 194 Brugia malayi in Mastomys coucha: establishment in immunosuppressed animals1 K. Tyagi, P.K. Murthy, R.K. Chatterjee ...

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Acta Tropica 71 (1998) 189 – 194

Brugia malayi in Mastomys coucha: establishment in immunosuppressed animals1 K. Tyagi, P.K. Murthy, R.K. Chatterjee * Di6ision of Parasitology, Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, 226001, India Accepted 4 February 1998

Abstract Investigations on various aspects of human filariasis using target filarial parasite, Brugia malayi is jeopardised to a great extent due to its prolonged incubation period and poor harvest from the existing experimental animal models. To obviate these difficulties it was decided to establish B. malayi infection in immunosuppressed Mastomys coucha. Cortisone, a well-known immunosuppressant, was used at 10-mg/kg dose level subcutaneously in two courses each of 5 days duration. The first course was administered 1 week before and the second, 1 week after infective exposure. Mastomys were exposed either with 100 or 200 L3 each. Untreated age-matched animals were also exposed simultaneously. The minimum prepatent period was observed to be 90.7 days in immunosuppressed animals exposed to 200 L3. The course of microfilaraemia in immunosuppressed and control animals was identical up to 180 days of observation period. However, the adult worm recovery from the former group of mastomys was higher. It is surmised that exposure with B. malayi L3 in immunosuppressed mastomys would be of great advantage in getting larger harvests of adult worms of B. malayi. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Brugia malayi; Mastomys coucha; Cortisone; Immunosuppressed

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 522 21241118, ext. 4315; fax: +91 522 223405/223938; e-mail: root.cscdri.ren.nic.in 1 CDRI Communication No.: 5691. 0001-706X/98/$ - see front matter © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII S0001-706X(98)00030-8

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1. Introduction Brugia malayi, a subperiodic strain of human filarial infection has been successfully transmitted to various vertebrate hosts including monkeys, cats and rodents (Edeson and Wharton, 1957; Schacher et al., 1969; Ash and Riley, 1970; Petranyi et al., 1975; Murthy et al., 1983, 1986, 1990; Tyagi et al., 1996). Among these Mastomys coucha is a small and hardy rodent commonly maintained as a laboratory animal. It is a good breeder and very suitable for cyclical maintenance of the infection. However, the main drawbacks are the prolonged incubation period and poor harvest of adult B. malayi which jeopardised investigation on several aspects of human filariasis using target lymphatic dwelling filarial infection. To obviate these difficulties it was decided to establish B. malayi infection in immunosuppressed animals. The present study deals with the findings regarding the establishment of B. malayi in mastomys pretreated with cortisone, a well known T-cell suppressant (Renoux and Renoux, 1980).

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Host The hosts were 8-weeks old male Mastomys coucha.

2.2. Parasite The parasite was a subperiodic strain of B. malayi.

2.3. Immunosuppressant Cortisone (hydrocortisone acetate; Roussel) was used at 10 mg/kg, subcutaneously, for 5 consecutive days. Two courses of cortisone were given. The first course was administered 1 week prior to infective exposure, i.e. on days − 7 to − 3, and the second course was given on days + 7 to + 11 post exposure (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Diagrammatic representation of protocol for cortisone administration and infective exposure.

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Table 1 Percent positivity for circulating mf and prepatent period in cortisone treated and untreated mastomys Group of animalsa

Number of L3 inoculated

Percent mf positives

Prepatent perioda (mean 9S.D.)

Cb1 (5) Ec1 (7) Cb2 (6) Ec2 (6)

100 100 200 200

100 100 100 100

111.40 921.80 95.509 18.79 97.75 9 13.96 90.67 914.38

(5) (7) (6) (6)

a

Number of animals in parenthesis. Untreated. c Treated. b

2.4. Infecti6e exposure Infective larvae (L3) recovered from Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, fed 10 days before on microfilaraemic mastomys (Murthy et al., 1983) were injected subcutaneously on day ‘0’. A total of seven immunosuppressed and five normal animals constituting groups E1 and C1, respectively, received 100 L3 each while six immunosuppressed and six normal animals, groups E2 and C2, received 200 L3 each (Table 1). The experiment was performed in two replicates using a total of 24 animals.

2.5. Assessment of establishment of infection 2.5.1. Duration of prepatent period Initially 20 cmm blood drawn at around 12:00 h (Gupta et al., 1990) from each infected animal was examined on day 60 post exposure (p.e.) and thereafter at weekly intervals until mf appeared in peripheral blood. 2.5.2. Parasitaemia Density of mf in peripheral blood (20 cmm) was monitored by thick smear method until 180th day of infection. 2.5.3. Adult worm burden After 180 days of infection all infected animals were sacrificed under deep anaesthesia. Worm load was ascertained as described earlier (Murthy et al., 1983). Uterine content of female worms was examined according to the method of Lammler (1977). 2.6. Statistical analysis Significance was determined by Student’s t-test.

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3. Results Table 1 depicts the percent positivity for circulating mf and duration of prepatent period as observed in both immunosuppressed and control animals. It was seen that 100% of animals of all the infected groups exhibited mf in their peripheral blood. The duration of prepatent period among different groups of animals varied between 90.67 and 111.4 days (mean values) and minimum prepatent period (90.67 days) was observed in animals of group E2. The variations in prepatent period were not statistically significant. The course of mf was identical among all the groups until 180 days of observation period (data not shown). Fig. 2 depicts the percent recovery of adult B. malayi from both immunosuppressed as well as normal mastomys. It is evident that immunosuppressed animals of groups E1 and E2 exhibited respectively 18.7598.04 and 22.9290.49 (mean+ S.D.) percent adult worm establishment whereas the corresponding control mastomys (belonging to groups C1 and C2) showed 10.894.87 and 11.089 4.9 percent adult worm recovery. The worm recovery from animals of group E2 only was found to be significantly high (P B0.001).

4. Discussion B. malayi infection which can easily be transmitted to variety of vertebrate hosts (Edeson et al., 1955; Orihel and Pacheco, 1966; Ash and Riley, 1970; Murthy et al., 1983; Mak et al., 1990; Murthy et al., 1990), showed poor rate of establishment in these animals. However, large numbers of parasites could be recovered from gerbils/Jirds when exposed intraperitoneally (i.p.) (Ash and Riley, 1970; Mak et al., 1994) but the i.p. route of infection is not the natural mode of exposure, hence results obtained with this host are less valuable for extrapolation to human infections. Moreover this rodent species is fragile, in that it cannot be bred under

Fig. 2. Recovery of adult worms from immunosuppressed and normal mastomys exposed to B. malayi L3.

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extreme climatic conditions and also cannot withstand repeated feeding of mosquitoes, which is necessary for cyclical maintenance of the infection. Therefore, the mastomys is a more dependable host for carrying out studies on chemotherapeutic as well as various other aspects of human filariasis. In order to alter the prolonged prepatent period and low worm recovery, mastomys were made immunosuppressed, prior to L3 exposure. The use of immunosuppressant in establishing various parasitic infections in refractory hosts (Bagai and Subrahmanyam, 1970; Cross et al., 1979) and the decisive role of T-cell activity in establishing helminthic infections (Nielson et al., 1974; Pollaco et al., 1978; Hammerberg et al., 1989) have been well documented. That is why the immunosuppressant used in the present study was (cortisone) a T-cell suppressant. Initial experiments (data not shown) showed that the immunosuppression caused by single course of cortisone (10 mg/kg daily for 5 days) persisted for 15 days, but the development of parasite from L3 to L5 takes about 35 days. Therefore, two courses of cortisone treatment were administered (as shown in Fig. 1) in such a fashion that all the developing stages experienced the immunosuppressive state of the host. It was interesting to observe that the duration of the prepatent period in immunosuppressed mastomys, as expected, was reduced though not to a statistically significant level. The adult worm recovery from immunosuppressed animals exposed to either 100 or 200 L3 was also improved (Fig. 2). However, the increase in number of adult parasites from immunosuppressed mastomys exposed to 100 L3 has no statistical significant whereas the large inoculum (200 L3/animal) exhibited significantly higher (PB 0.001) worm recovery. Microfilarial density as observed in animals of all four groups was found to be similar up to 180 days. This observation period may be insufficient to study the course of microfilaraemia because in mastomys it has been observed that peak mf counts appear at around 270 days post inoculation (Murthy et al., 1983). However, the aim of the present study was to observe the effect of immunosuppression on prepatent period and adult worm recovery, therefore the animals were sacrificed at an early time point. Nevertheless, it was also interesting to observe that most of the female worms recovered were gravid containing developing eggs and mf in their uteri. These finding thus indicate that the immunosuppressive effect of cortisone resulted in obtaining a larger harvest of adult B. malayi with a shorter prepatent period.

Acknowledgements The award of a Research Associateship by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi to K.T. is gratefully acknowledged.

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