Life cycle of Cryptosporidium muris in experimental conditions
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Citation | |
| Description | Cryptosporidia (Apicomplexa) have been recently recognized as one of the most ubiquitous parasites infecting gastrointestinal and respiratory tract of vertebrates. Localization of cryptosporidian developmental stages in the host epithelium has been the subject of extensive speculation for many years. Our published data support the term epicellular to reflect the cryptosporidian localization, rather than the term intracellular extracytoplasmic, used throughout the literature. Due to its peculiar localization, Cryptosporidium can derive nutrition while minimizing immunologic recognition and there is currently no effective treatment for cryptosporidiosis. In presented study, the life cycle of Cryptosporidium muris parasitizing gastric glands of experimentally infected laboratory rodents, Mastomys natalensis and BALB/c mice, has been analysed in detail. The main aim was to map the development of C. muris in hosts exhibiting different response to the parasitization. We have focused on the endogenous development of C. muris, during which the parasite was attached to the host epithelium and its development included both asexual and sexual developmental stages. Animals were dissected and screened for the presence of parasite using combined morphological approach and nested PCR (SSU rRNA) at different time after inoculation with infective oocysts. The study has revealed possible difficulties in detecting C. muris developmental stages in gastric glands during the first days of parasitization. In addition to experiments in vivo, we attempt to culture C. muris in vitro using the HCT-8 and HT-29 human adenocarcinoma cell lines. |
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