BURKHOLDERIA PSEUDOMALLEI BIOFILM PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN CHRONIC INFLAMMATION IN C57BL/6 MICE.
Pawana PanomketParichart WongsanaSurasak WanramSurasakdi WongratanacheewinPublished in: The Southeast Asian journal of tropical medicine and public health (2018)
Burkholderia pseudomallei is a causative agent of melioidosis. Clinical
signs of melioidosis vary from acute septicemia to chronic inflammation or subclinical
infection. This study investigated the role of B. pseudomallei biofilm in
chronic inflammation in lungs of infected C57BL/6 mice. Low doses of B. pseudomallei
H777 and its biofilm defective M10 mutant were fed intra-gastrically to
C57BL/6 mice and inflammatory responses were investigated by histopathological
techniques. Two hundred colony forming units (CFUs) of B. pseudomallei H777
induced chronic inflammatory responses in mice on day 20 post-infection, with
discrete interstitial infiltration by mononuclear inflammatory cells. On day 40 postinfection,
there were marked thickening of alveolar septa and congested capillaries,
which increased in severity by day 60. On the other hand, mice infected with B.
pseudomallei M10 showed less mononuclear infiltration. The results indicate that
B. pseudomallei defective in biofilm production gave rise to less severe pathology,
resulting a higher rate of survival in infected mice; and pulmonary melioidosis
could be developed in C57BL/6 mice by intra-gastric feeding makes it a possible
animal model of chronic human melioidosis.