ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Voon Kin Chin1, Kuan Jeang Foong1, Maha Abdullah2, Rusliza Basir3, Norhafizah Mohtarrudin2 and Pei Pei Chong1,4
1Department of Biomedical Science, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia.
2Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia.
3Department of Human Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia.
4Translational Infectious Diseases Program, Centre for Translational Medicine, Department of Microbiology, National University of Singapore, Level 15 MD6, 5Science Drive 2, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597.
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2014;8(5):3421-3428
© The Author(s). 2014
Received: 04/05/2014 | Accepted: 26/06/2014 | Published: 31/10/2014
Abstract

The incidence of systemic infection caused by C. glabrata is increasing in immunocompromised patients and resulted in high mortality rate due to antifungal resistance. The pathogenesis underlying C. glabrata infection still remains elusive and requires extensive study on it. Hence, this study was aimed to elucidate the pathogenesis of a clinical C. glabrata isolate from a Malaysian patient in an intravenous challenged murine model. Mice were challenged intravenously with C. glabrata (1×10^8 organisms/mouse) via lateral tail vein and parameters such as quantitative yeast culture, red blood cells and haemoglobin counts, blood plate assay and  histopathology were adopted to evaluate the pathogenesis of systemic C. glabrata infection. Transcript level of erythropoietin from blood at day 7 post infection was quantified via RT-qPCR. Kidneys of infected mice have highest fungal recovery rate as compared to other organs and there were yeast infiltration with mild inflammation seen in kidney and brain tissues. Red blood cells and haemoglobin counts were reduced throughout the infection period and this reduction which might be associated with the action of haemolysin enzyme of C. glabrata in conjunction with iron scavenging for the fungal growth. Erythropoietin mRNA level was found to be up-regulated in blood which indicated a possible role for erythropoietin in compensating the red blood cells loss throughout the infection period. This study reflected the core events during systemic C. glabrata infection and involvement of erythropoietin which could be of clinical relevance during systemic C. glabrata infection. However, further comprehensive in vitro and in vivo studies are warranted.

Keywords

C. glabrata, Erythropoietin, Haemolysin, Red blood cells and haemoglobin counts, Histopathology, Quantitative yeast counts

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© The Author(s) 2014. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.