Schistosoma haematobium cercarial infection alters subsequent systemic immune responses to eggs but has minimal impact on immune responses to egg injection of the bladder.

Cercarial exposure altered systemic responses of several cytokines in bladder egg-injected mice, but surprisingly, only modified leptin expression in bladder tissue. This suggests that depending on the specific application, cercarial exposure may not be strictly necessary to model local immune responses in the bladder wall egg injection mouse model of urogenital schistosomiasis.