Banabazi, Mohammad Hossein
- Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Animal Science Research Institute of Iran
Abstract
Toxoplasma gondii is a common and opportunistic protozoan in vertebrates. Most cases of infection are asymptomatic, but in individuals with an immune system deficiency, it can cause severe complications. The parasite has the ability to form cysts in the host's heart, brain, and other tissues. Heart tissue damage during toxoplasmosis infection is associated with many complications, such as myocarditis, pericarditis, arrhythmia and heart failure. The parasite can survive and create a chronic form of infection by changing the expression of genes effective in the immune system. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate expression dynamics of candidate genes in the heart tissue of mice infected with the chronic T. gondii strain of Tehran and the pathways involved. After causing toxoplasmosis infection in mice and confirming the infection by MAT, RNA was extracted from the heart tissue of mice and converted into cDNA. Then, real-time PCR was performed to check the expression changes based on the designed primers of the target genes, and pathway analysis was performed. The results of real-time PCR analysis showed that all candidate genes have a higher expression in infected heart tissue compared to non-infected heart tissue. In addition, gene ontology and pathway analysis revealed that the cytosolic DNA-sensing pathway and autoimmune thyroid illness had the most gene participation.
Keywords
Toxoplasma gondii; Chronic infection; Heart; Pathway analysis; Rt-PCR
Published in
European Journal of Medical Research
2025, volume: 30, number: 1, article number: 802
Publisher: BMC
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Immunology in the medical area
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40001-025-03088-z
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/143683