Affiliation:
1. Departments of Microbiology and Immunology
2. Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York 10461
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Macrophages have a central role in the pathogenesis of cryptococcosis since they are an important line of defense, serve as a site for fungal replication, and also can contribute to tissue damage. The objective of this study was to investigate the interaction of macrophages with cells from smooth-colony variants (SM) and mucoid-colony variants (MC) arising from phenotypic switching of
Cryptococcus neoformans
. Alveolar macrophages (AMs) isolated from SM- and MC-infected mice exhibited differences in gene and surface expression of PD-L1, PD-L2, and major histocompatibility class II (MHC-II). PD-L1 and PD-L2 are the ligands for PD1 and are differentially regulated in Th1- and Th2-type cells. In addition, macrophage activation in SM- and MC-infected mice was characterized as alternatively activated. Flow cytometric and cytokine analysis demonstrated that MC infection was associated with the emergence of Th17 cells and higher levels of interleukin-17 (IL-17) in lung tissue, which were reduced by AM depletion. In conclusion, our results indicate that macrophages play a significant role in maintaining damage-promoting inflammation in the lung during MC infection, which ultimately results in death.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Infectious Diseases,Immunology,Microbiology,Parasitology
Cited by
31 articles.
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