| Title | Reduced hamster usage and stress in propagating Leishmania chagasi promastigotes using cryopreservation and saphenous vein inoculation. | | Author(s) | Lei SM, Ramer-Tait AE, Dahlin-Laborde RR, Mullin K, Beetham JK | | Source | J Parasitol 2009 Oct 16.:1. | | Abstract | Leishmania chagasi, a causal agent of visceral leishmaniasis, requires passage through lab animals such as hamsters to maintain its virulence. Hamster infection is typically accomplished via cardiac puncture or intraperitoneal injection, procedures accompanied by risks of increased animal stress and death. The use of the hamster model also necessitates a regular supply of infected animals, since L. chagasi parasites newly isolated from an infected hamster can be grown in culture for only several weeks before loss of function/phenotype occurs. Towards decreasing animal usage and animal stress, experiments were performed to assess a more gentle inoculation procedure (saphenous vein inoculation) and the use of cryopreserved parasite cells for research experiments. Out of 81 hamsters inoculated by the saphenous vein, 80 became infected as determined ante mortem by display of clinical symptoms of leishmaniasis (onset of symptoms at 105 +/- 22 days post inoculation) and postmortem by the presence of parasites within the spleen. Splenic parasite load calculated for a subset (n=34) of infected hamsters was 124 to 26,177 LD units. Cryopreserved and never-stored cells were equivalent in all properties evaluated including developmental changes in morphology during culture, culture growth rates, parasite resistance to serum-mediated lysis, and expression of developmentally regulated surface proteins MSP and PSA. | | Language | ENG | | Pub Type(s) | JOURNAL ARTICLE
| | PubMed ID | 19835434 |
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