Khan Masood A, Khan Arif, Owais Mohammed
Interdisciplinary Biotechnology Unit, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh-202002, India.
FEMS Immunol Med Microbiol. 2006 Feb;46(1):63-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1574-695X.2005.00014.x.
In the present study, we investigated the immunopotentiating activity of the immunomodulator tuftsin for the treatment of dose-dependent susceptible Candida albicans infection in a murine model. Our results demonstrated that tuftsin increases the susceptibility of C. albicans to phagocytosis by activating murine macrophages. Fluconazole used for the treatment of mice infected with C. albicans showed less in vivo efficacy and proved to be ineffective in the elimination of the infection from leukopenic mice even at higher doses. However, the antifungal activity of fluconazole against the same isolate of C. albicans significantly increased in tuftsin-pretreated mice and resulted in an improved survival rate in mice. The treated mice also showed less severity of infection as supported by a reduced fungal burden in their kidneys. This study indicates that the use of immunopotentiating substances can enhance the therapeutic efficacy of azole antifungal agents and thus can effectively combat azole-resistant fungal pathogens under conditions of immunosuppression.
在本研究中，我们调查了免疫调节剂促吞噬素在小鼠模型中对剂量依赖性易感白色念珠菌感染治疗的免疫增强活性。我们的结果表明，促吞噬素通过激活小鼠巨噬细胞增加白色念珠菌对吞噬作用的敏感性。用于治疗感染白色念珠菌小鼠的氟康唑在体内显示出较低的疗效，并且即使在高剂量下也被证明对消除白细胞减少小鼠的感染无效。然而，在经促吞噬素预处理的小鼠中，氟康唑对同一株白色念珠菌的抗真菌活性显著增加，并导致小鼠存活率提高。治疗后的小鼠感染严重程度也较低，其肾脏中的真菌负荷降低证明了这一点。这项研究表明，使用免疫增强物质可以提高唑类抗真菌药物的治疗效果，从而在免疫抑制条件下有效对抗唑类耐药真菌病原体。
