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Chronic Toxoplasma gondii infection contributes to decreasing of perineuronal nets surrounding neurons in the Corpus striatum of mice

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Abstract

Recent advances in chronic toxoplasmosis understanding became the focus of discussion about behavioral abnormalities, which could be explained by cyst location and neuronal impairment in specific brain areas. Perineuronal nets (PNNs) are specialized extracellular matrices that surround the neuronal body and proximal dendrites and play key roles in neuronal circuitry maintenance and stabilization. Its impairment can lead to abnormal synaptic functioning with behavioral repercussions. In this context, we analyzed the impact of Toxoplasma gondii infection on neuronal integrity in the Corpus striatum of chronically infected mice. C57BL/6 and Balb/c female mice were infected with T. gondii ME49 cysts. Brain sections were submitted to immunohistochemistry with Wisteria floribunda agglutinin (WFA) for PNN labeling followed by quantification of tissue cyst and labeled neuronal cells 30 days after infection. Our results revealed that C57BL/6 exhibited a significant decrease in PNN-positive (WFA+) labeled neurons and an expressively higher number of tissue cysts than Balb/c mice. It was also possible to observe that the number of T. gondii tissue cysts and the number of WFA+ neurons were inversely correlated for C57BL/6-infected mice. However, no correlation was observed for Balb/c mice. These data suggest how the impact of parasite dissemination in the brain and host characteristics can influence neuronal integrity impairment during infection by decreasing WFA+ neurons. This might be a plausible pathway in which the presence of T. gondii contributes to behavioral changes in the infected host.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the Laboratory of Neurochemistry Studies (LENQ) in the Department of Physiology and the Laboratory of Immunoparasitology (LIP) in the Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal-RN/Brazil for all support during experimental procedures. We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.com) for English language editing. We are grateful to the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) for providing master’s degree scholarship (for RMMB and BMMM) and National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) by CNPq/PQ-Research Productivity Fellowship recipient (VFAN).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Program in Parasitary Biology, Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil

    Ramayana Morais de Medeiros Brito & Valter Ferreira de Andrade-Neto

  2. Laboratory of Malaria and Toxoplasmosis Biology, Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil

    Ramayana Morais de Medeiros Brito, Ywlliane da Silva Rodrigues Meurer, Lidiane da Silva Santos, Brenna Marceliane de Melo Marcelino & Valter Ferreira de Andrade-Neto

  3. Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience, Department of Pharmacology, Federal University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Ywlliane da Silva Rodrigues Meurer

  4. Graduate Program in Biological Sciences, Biosciences Centre, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil

    Brenna Marceliane de Melo Marcelino & Valter Ferreira de Andrade-Neto

Authors
  1. Ramayana Morais de Medeiros Brito
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  2. Ywlliane da Silva Rodrigues Meurer
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  3. Lidiane da Silva Santos
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  4. Brenna Marceliane de Melo Marcelino
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  5. Valter Ferreira de Andrade-Neto
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Contributions

Ramayana Morais de Medeiros Brito, Ywlliane da Silva Rodrigues Meurer, and Valter Ferreira de Andrade-Neto conceived and designed the study protocol, performed data and statistical analysis, and wrote the manuscript. Lidiane da Silva Santos and Brenna Marceliane de Melo Marcelino contributed to data collection and execution of experimental tests. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Valter Ferreira de Andrade-Neto.

Ethics declarations

This project was performed in accordance with the norms issued by the National Council for the Control of Animal Experimentation (CONCEA), approved by the Committee on Ethics in the Use of Animals of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (CEUA/UFRN), under protocol 048/2018, certificate number 124.048/2018.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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de Medeiros Brito, R.M., da Silva Rodrigues Meurer, Y., da Silva Santos, L. et al. Chronic Toxoplasma gondii infection contributes to decreasing of perineuronal nets surrounding neurons in the Corpus striatum of mice. Parasitol Res 119, 1989–1995 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-06674-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-020-06674-8

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