- Oral presentation
- Open access
- Published:
Experimental mouse model of tuberculous uveitis
BMC Infectious Diseases volume 14, Article number: O20 (2014)
Background
Tuberculous uveitis is one of the emerging forms of extrapulmonary tuberculosis. To understand the many unknown facets of this disease pertaining to diagnosis, treatment and pathogenesis, a mouse model of tuberculous uveitis was established.
Methods
Mice (Balb/c) were infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (H37Rv) through two different routes, i.v. and i.n. at different doses. Delayed type hypersensitivity (DTH) assay at 24 and 48hours before sacrifice, CFU enumeration in eyes, RT-PCR, histopathological studies and cytokine analysis were performed in these animals.
Results
The i.v. and i.n. challenged mice showed significant DTH response. The CFU enumeration in eye did not show any bacilli initially by 30th day however tubercle bacilli could be recovered from the eyes of i.v. infected mice by 45th day at the time of death. Histopathology of these eyes showed inflammation with cluster of lymphocytes. The RT- PCR for IS6110 gene from the eyes of i.n. infected animals was positive at different doses whereas i.v. challenged mice showed variability. Furthermore, the cytokine analysis in infected tissue supernatants of both eyes and lung showed high Th1 response (IFN-γ) in comparison to non-infected group.
Conclusion
Overall, this study evaluated the ability of M. tb to establish infection in the eyes of mouse model following infection with different routes, doses and at different time points. RT-PCR positivity for IS6110 gene along with high IFN-γ response in the eyes of infected animals as compared to non-infected mice without any bacteriological evidence indicate the establishment of a paucibacillary TB uveitis mouse model, a model mimicking the human TB uveitis condition.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
About this article
Cite this article
Abhishek, S., Gupta, A. & Verma, I. Experimental mouse model of tuberculous uveitis. BMC Infect Dis 14 (Suppl 3), O20 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-S3-O20
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-S3-O20