Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark.
Institute for Immunological Research, University of Cartagena, Colombia.
J Infect Dis. 2018 Jan 4;217(2):310-319. doi: 10.1093/infdis/jix585.
Ascaris suum is a helminth parasite of pigs closely related to its human counterpart, A. lumbricoides, which infects almost 1 billion people. Ascaris is thought to modulate host immune and inflammatory responses, which may drive immune hyporesponsiveness during chronic infections. Using transcriptomic analysis, we show here that pigs with a chronic A. suum infection have a substantial suppression of inflammatory pathways in the intestinal mucosa, with a broad downregulation of genes encoding cytokines and antigen-processing and costimulatory molecules. A. suum body fluid (ABF) suppressed similar transcriptional pathways in human dendritic cells (DCs) in vitro. DCs exposed to ABF secreted minimal amounts of cytokines and had impaired production of cyclooxygengase-2, altered glucose metabolism, and reduced capacity to induce interferon-gamma production in T cells. Our in vivo and in vitro data provide an insight into mucosal immune modulation during Ascaris infection, and show that A. suum profoundly suppresses immune and inflammatory pathways.
猪蛔虫是一种寄生在猪体内的寄生虫，与人类蛔虫 A. lumbricoides 密切相关，后者感染了近 10 亿人。人们认为蛔虫能够调节宿主的免疫和炎症反应，这可能导致慢性感染期间的免疫低反应性。通过转录组分析，我们在这里表明，患有慢性猪蛔虫感染的猪在肠道黏膜中存在大量炎症途径的抑制，编码细胞因子和抗原加工以及共刺激分子的基因广泛下调。猪蛔虫体液（ABF）在体外抑制人树突状细胞（DC）的类似转录途径。暴露于 ABF 的 DC 分泌极少数量的细胞因子，并且产生环氧化酶-2 的能力受损，改变了葡萄糖代谢，并降低了诱导 T 细胞产生干扰素-γ的能力。我们的体内和体外数据提供了对蛔虫感染期间黏膜免疫调节的深入了解，并表明猪蛔虫严重抑制了免疫和炎症途径。
