Lack of galectin-3 drives response to Paracoccidioides brasiliensis toward a Th2-biased immunity.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 19229338.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0004519 and PMC identifier 2641003.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
There is recent evidence that galectin-3 participates in immunity to infections, mostly by tuning cytokine production. We studied the balance of Th1/Th2 responses to P. brasiliensis experimental infection in the absence of galectin-3. The intermediate resistance to the fungal infection presented by C57BL/6 mice, associated with the development of a mixed type of immunity, was replaced with susceptibility to infection and a Th2-polarized immune response, in galectin-3-deficient (gal3(-/-)) mice. Such a response was associated with defective inflammatory and delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) reactions, high IL-4 and GATA-3 expression and low nitric oxide production in the organs of infected animals. Gal3(-/-) macrophages exhibited higher TLR2 transcript levels and IL-10 production compared to wild-type macrophages after stimulation with P. brasiliensis antigens. We hypothesize that, during an in vivo P. brasiliensis infection, galectin-3 exerts its tuning role on immunity by interfering with the generation of regulatory macrophages, thus hindering the consequent Th2-polarized type of response.
Medical subject headings
- Galectin 3
- Paracoccidioides
- Th2 Cells