Premium
Influence of antiorthostatic suspension on resistance to murine Listeria monocytogenes infection
Author(s) -
Miller Edwin S.,
Sonnenfeld Gerald
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
journal of leukocyte biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.819
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1938-3673
pISSN - 0741-5400
DOI - 10.1002/jlb.55.3.371
Subject(s) - listeria monocytogenes , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , virulence , suspension (topology) , pathogen , listeria , bacteria , biochemistry , genetics , mathematics , homotopy , pure mathematics , gene
Abstract The present study was designed to evaluate the influence of antiorthostatic suspension, a ground‐based modeling system employed to simulate certain aspects of weightlessness that occur during space flight, on the capacity of mice to resist infection with the facultative intracellular bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. Female BDF1 mice were suspended by the tail in the orthostatic or antiorthostatic position and were infected with a sublethal dose of virulent L. monocytogenes at various times during the suspension. It was found that suspension did not influence the kinetics of bacterial growth in vivo if the infection was started concurrently with the suspension. However, mice that were antiorthostatically suspended 2, 4, or 7 days before the onset of infection exhibited an enhanced capacity to eliminate the challenge infection. Suspending mice on day 2 of the infection did not alter the kinetics of bacterial growth. Finally, the enhancement of resistance to the primary Listeria infection was accompanied by failure of the mice to generate long‐term protective immunological memory to the challenge organism. Collectively, these results indicate that the stress of antiorthostatic suspension can influence the capacity of mice to resist bacterial infection. J. Leukoc. Biol. 55: 371–378; 1994.