Comparison Between Plethysmometer and Caliper Methods to Monitor Lesion-Size Induced by &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Leishmania major&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt; Infection in BALB/c Mouse Experimental Model

Hanene Attia

doi:10.11648/j.avs.20150306.16

Abstract

In several parasitological diseases, as for leishmaniasis, measurement of the size of cutaneous lesions, which develop at the site of parasite inoculation in animal models, are the most commonly used index to assess disease progression, to compare parasites pathogenicity or virulence and to determine the effects of drug treatment and immunotherapies. The aim of this study is to compare the accuracy of two measurement tools i.e., the caliper and the plethysmometer to refine the lesion size determination. Our findings showed that the use of plethysmometer produced higher correlation with the importance of the lesion mass at experimental endpoints. These findings suggest that, for better differentiation in drug monitoring or <i>Leishmania</i> (<i>L. </i>) strains’ virulence and pathogenicity, plethysmometer method is more sensitive to detect parasite-induced swelling and lesions differences at the end of experimental protocols when lesion size is important but caliper is more indicated for small lesions.

Highlights

The clinical manifestations of human cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania (L.) major display a spectrum of disease severity varying from an asymptomatic infection to multiple disfiguring scars [1, 2]
In this work, using the BALB/c experimental mice model, we aimed to compare lesion measurements obtained by both methods on the same animals infected with different L. major wild strains isolated from patients living in a zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (ZCL) endemic area of Tunisia
Eleven strains of L. major were isolated from fresh lesions of patients living in the Centre of Tunisia, an endemic region for ZCL

Summary

Introduction

The clinical manifestations of human cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania (L.) major display a spectrum of disease severity varying from an asymptomatic infection to multiple disfiguring scars [1, 2]. This differential clinical expression is considered as the result of interaction between individual behaviour of the microorganism and the host immunologic background. Cutaneous infection of mice with L. major is a well-established experimental model of chronic human disease caused by an intracellular parasite This local infection is not well controlled by the immune anti-parasite responses in susceptible BALB/c mice and the disease disseminates towards the visceral organs with fatal outcome

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion