CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Galectins are a family of lectins that contain characteristic aminoacid sequences and have affnity for B-galactosides. Galectin-8(Gal-8), which belongs to the tandem repeat group, it is widely distributed in tissues and secreted to the extracellular media, acting inan autocrine/paracrine manner. It participates in cellular adhesion,migration, and apoptosis, mainly in cancer and autoimmune disorders. Different authors have also proposed Gal-8 to be involvedin pro-inﬂammatory or anti-inﬂammatory events. Chagasic cardiomyopathy is a chronic disease, whose development is based onthe induction of a strong inﬂammation by Trypanosoma cruzi persistence in cardiac tissue. The aim of this work was to analyze therole of Gal-8 in an inﬂammatory context induced by T. cruzi. Gal-8knock out (KO) and C57/BL6 (WT) mice were infected with T. cruzistrain Ac and sacrifced at 4 months post infection for histopathologyand phenotyping analysis. The inﬂammation score in cardiac tissueof KO mice was signifcantly higher compared with WT mice. Nodifference was found in fbrosis induction. The cellular populationpresent in infected heart tissues, was characterized by ﬂow-cytometry analysis. There were no differences in the levels of (CD-11b+Ly6ChighLy6G-) and (CD11b+Ly6ClowLy6G-) monocytes, dendritic cells (CD11c+F4/80-CD11b+) ;( CD11c+F4/80-CD11b-) andT lymphocytes (CD3+CD4+ and CD3+CD8+) between KO and WTinfected hearts. However, inﬂammatory cells isolated from KO infected mice showed higher frequency of neutrophils (P=0.0097) andmacrophages (P=0.0021) compared to WT mice, with concomitantincrease of MCP-1 mRNA expression levels (P=0.0023). In agreement, increased levels of neutrophils (p=0.033) were observed inspleens from KO infected mice compared to those of WT mice.The reported participation of Gal-8 in preaperesis induction on leukocytes is in agreement with our fndings.Altogether, our results suggest a Gal-8 anti-inﬂammatory role in T.cruzi infection