Experimental prostatitis following male natural route of infection by Chlamydia trachomatis

JUAN PABLO MACKERN OBERTI; MARIANA MACCIONI; VIRGINIA RIVERO

Rio de Janeiro - Brasil

Congreso; 13th International Congress of Immunology; 2007

IUIS

The pathogenic consequences of Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) has been extensively studied in female genital tract infection models.  In contrast, they are not well understood in male genital tract infections, specially prostatic infections. This is due to the lack of versatile experimental models.  The goal of this work was to investigate if CT can reach the prostate gland following a male natural route of infection.  Adult male mice (n=20) were inoculated with CT in the meatus urethra. A control group (n=20) was sham infected. Animals were sacrificed at 4, 7, 10, 14, 20 and 30 days postinfection (dpi) and urethra, seminal vesicles, prostate and testis were removed homogenized and inoculated onto LLCMK2 cells to reisolate CT. Blood samples were collected at 20 dpi to evaluate the humoral response by indirect immunofluorescent assays. CT were reisolated after infection from urethra in 65% of the animals. Interestingly, prostate showed to be highly susceptible to CT since it could be reisolated from this gland at every time studied in 35%,100%,65% and 35% of the animals respectively. In contrast, it could be reisolated from seminal vesicles and testis only at early times after infection in 50 and 30% of the animals respectively.  At 20 and 30 dpi all tissues showed negative cultures.  Chlamydia-specific IgG were detected 20 dpi with titers higher than 1/400. Control animals rendered negative results.  We propose a new in vivo model of CT infection of the prostate which could shed new light to the understanding of prostate infections.