Analysis of the cytokine profile in spleen cells from dogs naturally infected by Leishmania chagasi.

• Autor(a) principal: Lage, Ramon Silva
• Data de Publicação: 2007
• Outros Autores: Oliveira, Guilherme Corrêa de, Busek, Solange Cristina Uber, Guerra, Luanda Liboreiro, Giunchetti, Rodolfo Cordeiro, Oliveira, Rodrigo Corrêa de, Reis, Alexandre Barbosa
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFOP
• Texto Completo: http://www.repositorio.ufop.br/handle/123456789/1027
• topic: Cytokines; Canine disease; Visceral leishmaniasis; Leishmania chagasi

Recent studies suggest that asymptomatic dogs infected with canine visceral leishmaniasis (CVL) develop a Th1 immunological profile whilst oligosymptomatic and symptomatic CVL-infected animals present a Th2 profile. In the present study, an RT-PCR method has been standardised and employed to evaluate the frequency and the semi-quantitative level of expression of the cytokines IL-4, IL-10, IL-12, INF- g and TNF- a in splenocytes of 30 dogs naturally infected with Leishmania chagasiand of 7 non-infected dogs (NID). An increase in the level of expression of IL-12 ( p = 0.059) was detected in all CVL-infected dogs compared with NID. In dogs exhibiting high parasitism, the frequency of expression of IL-10 was higher ( p = 0.011) than in animals presenting low parasitism or medium parasitism (MP) and in NID animals, whilst the level of expression of IL-10 was higher (p = 0.0094) than in animals exhibiting MP and in the NID group. Positive correlations between the levels of expression of IL-10 with respect to the progression of the disease (IL-10: r = 0.3510; p = 0.0337) and the levels of expression of IL-10 and INF- g increase in parasitism (IL-10: r = 0.3428; p = 0.0438 and INF- g: r = 0.4690; p = 0.0045) were observed. Such data suggest that CVL is marked by a balanced production of Th1 and Th2 cytokines, with a predominant accumulation of IL-10 as a consequence of an increase in parasitic load and progression of the disease, and INF- g was related with the increase in parasitic load.