The humoral immune response to T. cruzi component 5 differs significantly between humans and animal models, suggesting these animals may not be suitable immunological models for human Chagas' disease.
Component 5 elicits strong human but weak animal antibody responses in T. cruzi infection; hypothesis-generating for animal model suitability in Chagas research.
A competitive antibody enzyme immunoassay, using a monoclonal antibody against the species-specific Trypanosoma crnzi antigen 5, was used to investigate the presence of anti-component 5 antibodies in sera of opossums, dogs, rabbits and rats infected with this parasite. The sera from 51 Venezuelan patients with Chagas’disease were also tested. About 90% of the infected subjects showed significant levels of anti-component 5 antibodies. Nevertheless, these antibodies were not detected in the sera of dogs, rats and opossums infected with T. cruzl Some sera from infected rabbits presented significant results but close to the limit ofpositivity ofthe test. These findings suggest that the immune response in animals naturally or experimentally infected with T. cruzi is different from that observed in human Chagas’disease.
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Santoro et al. (1987) studied this question.
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