Macrophages, myeloperoxidase, and Mycobacterium lepraemurium.

Abstract

Abstract In 1978, McKeever et al. [10], studying lepromatous tissues from Mycobacterium leprae-infected armadillos by cytochemical and electronmicroscopic technics, found a subpopulation of macrophages containing peroxisomes (probably monocytes), but not infected with bacilli, and a subpopulation of macrophages lacking peroxisomes and infected with bacilli. Both infected and noninfected macrophages displayed acid phosphatase activity that was more intense and less precisely localized in heavily infected and vacuolated macrophages than in moderately or noninfected cells. Then, in 1983, Gomez Estrada et al [5], looking for the presence of myeloperoxidase (MPO) in histiocytes, Kupffer cells, and PMN leukocytes of nodular lepromatous patients, found abundant M. leprae in the phagocytes of the lesions but they did not find MPO activity within these cells (except in one case of reactional leprosy). They also found that MPO activity was present in Kupffer’s cells and in PMN of patients and controls.