ENVIRONMENTAL ENRICHMENT IMPROVES NEUROCOGNITION AND BEHAVIOR IN A MURINE MODEL OF CHRONIC TOXOPLASMOSIS

FLORENCIA ANDRÉS; M PERRONE SIBILIA; N ARCON; ML FURLÁN; I FENOY; A GOLDMAN; N JUSTEL; V MARTÍN; V SANCHEZ

Congreso; Reunion Conjunta SAIC-SAI-AAFE-NANOMED; 2021

Currently, accumulated evidence links T. gondii chronic infectionwith different pathologies, including neurocognitive and behavioralconditions. There are no treatments able to eliminate the parasiteat this stage or to reduce the adverse effects associated with the infection.Herein, we study the effect of a non-invasive therapy basedon environmental enrichment (EE) on brain parasite load and thedamaging effects of infection.METHODS: The EE therapy involves increasing the available spaceand the addition of novel elements in the habitat. Chronically infectedtreated (TE), untreated (T) and naive (N) C57BL/6 mice wereused to evaluate different abilities by the Open Field (OF), HoleBoard (HB), Forced Swim (FS) and Novel Object Recognition (NOR)tests. Data was analyzed using ANOVA test. Brain cyst burden wasevaluated at the end.RESULTS: OF results evidence that the EE treatment on infectedmice improved its exploratory ability measured as crossed lines (TEvs T p=0,0059) and rearings (TE vs T p=0,008), leading to similarlevels than the N mice. We confirmed this result with the HB, whereTE showed a 2,1-fold increase in nose poke behavior than the Tgroup, reaching similar records to N (TE vs T p=0,007). The positiveimpact of the therapy was also exposed in the memory-learningabilities, measured by NOR, since TE showed higher identificationindex compared to T and similar performance to N (TE vsT p=0,0014). Also, the EE improved the TE response to stressfulsituations previously experienced as measured by the FS (TE vsT p=0,0014), with similar results to N. Nevertheless, brain parasiteload was similar in TE and T groups.CONCLUSIONS: This environmental enrichment therapy showed apositive impact in all the studied skills, showing its potential to dealwith the harmful effects of chronic toxoplasmosis, improving well-being of the affected individuals. This type of non-invasive therapycould be easily incorporated into translational medicine approaches.