Aims:Our study was to build up a mouse model of pneumonitis induced by candida albicans infection after allogeneic skin transplantation.

Methods:We used 10 male C57BL/6J mice as the donors, and 60 male Balb/c mice as the recipients. All mice were 6∼8 weeks old. After allogeneic skin transplantation model was built, cyclosporine A was injected into each recipient at a dose of 30 mg/kg/day throughout the study. All recipients were randomized into three groups at 7d post-operation, and received 200 ¯o;l candida albicans suspension of three different concentrations (5×103 CFU/ml, 5×104 CFU/ml and 5×105 CFU/ml) by mean of intranasal administration respectively. Mice were sacrificed at 1d, 3d, 7d and 14d post-infection, and the tissue of lung and kidney were collected for PCR analysis, tissue culture and histological evaluation.

Results:The DNA of candida albicans could be detected in the lung and kidney tissue of all groups with a range of 101∼103 copies. Many candida albicans colonies were grew in the lung tissue culture of the highest concentration group with a result of 368.96CFU/g at 1d, 3888.10CFU/g at 3d, 15.00CFU/g at 7d and 24.33CFU/g at 14d post-infection. Small counts of colonies were cultured with the kidney tissue in this group(0.00CFU/g at 1d, 15.00CFU/g at 3d, 2.50CFU/g at 7d and 1.50CFU/g at 14d post-infection). However, no colony of candida albicans was developed in the rest groups. After hematoxylin-eosin staining, the lung tissue of all groups showed various degrees of tissue edema and inflammatory cell infiltration. Methenamine silver staining only identified a small amount of candida albicans hypha in the lung tissue of the 5×105 CFU/ml group.

Conclusions:We built up a mouse model of pneumonitis induced by candida albicans infection after allogeneic skin transplantation successfully, with intranasal inoculation of 200¯o;l candida albicans suspension at the concentration of 5×105CFU/ml. Our model could be further used for investigations in the field of early diagnosis, treatment and prevention of fungal pneumonia in post-transplanted patients.

« Back to 2015 American Transplant Congress