Abstract
Thirty-one sheep naturally infected with small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLV) of known genotype (A or B), and clinically affected with neurological disease, pneumonia or arthritis were used to analyse mannose receptor (MR) expression (transcript levels) and proviral load in virus target tissues (lung, mammary gland, CNS and carpal joints). Control sheep were SRLV-seropositive asymptomatic (n = 3), seronegative (n = 3) or with chronic listeriosis, pseudotuberculosis or parasitic cysts (n = 1 in each case). MR expression and proviral load increased with the severity of lesions in most analyzed organs of the SRLV infected sheep and was detected in the affected tissue involved in the corresponding clinical disease (CNS, lung and carpal joint in neurological disease, pneumonia and arthritis animal groups, respectively). The increased MR expression appeared to be SRLV specific and may have a role in lentiviral pathogenesis.
Highlights
Thirty-one sheep naturally infected with small ruminant lentiviruses (SRLV) of known genotype (A or B), and clinically affected with neurological disease, pneumonia or arthritis were used to analyse mannose receptor (MR) expression and proviral load in virus target tissues
In this study, knowing the role of the mannose receptor (MR) as a cellular receptor for SRLV in vitro [10], we aimed to investigate in SRLV natural infections if MR expression was increased in affected target tissues from animals with the different clinical forms of the disease and if this putative increase was related to the presence of infected cells and lesions in these tissues, in order to gain
Expression and proviral load are increased in tissues affected by clinical A or B SRLV infections presenting different disease forms (CNS in the neurological, lung in the pulmonary and carpal joint in the arthritic form), and that the increase in both of them is related to the severity of lesions, strongly suggesting a role of MR expression in SRLV pathogenesis, independently of the disease form presented by the animal
Summary
Signs of lesion were recorded as encephalitis (E), choroiditis (C), myelitis (ME), interstitial pneumonia (IP), follicular hyperplasia (FH), arthritis (A) and interstitial mastitis (IM). Within each diseased animal group, real time PCR results revealed a significantly increased MR expression in SRLV affected tissues (Figure 1): CNS (p = 0.0145), lung (p = 0.024) and carpal joint (p = 0.001) in the encephalitis, pneumonia and arthritis groups, respectively. The presence of mastitis was not evident macroscopically, but in the three groups (Table 1) there were animals presenting mild or moderate (never severe) SRLV-compatible microscopic lesions in the mammary gland. Proviral load was assessed by real time PCR of genomic DNA as described previously [12], using SYBR Premix Ex Taq (Takara) and LTR-region specific primers designed for encephalitis A [13], pneumonia A [14] and arthritis B2 (this work; Fw: TGCTGCTTGCACTTCRGAGTT; Rv: GGCAG TAAGGCAATCACTCCTT) genotypes to obtain.
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