| Popis: |
Blastocystis is a common gut protist of human spread around the globe with the prevalence ranging from 5 % to 100 %. In the past, Blastocystis was considered a pathogen participating on the clinical manifestation of intestinal inflammation such as Crohn's disease or Irritable bowel syndrome. New evidence demonstrates that Blastocystis is most probably a normal part of the gut microbiota in healthy humans and animals. So far, there is no established and commonly used in vivo experimental system for the investigation of the role of Blastocystis in health and disease. Thus, we evaluated a rat model for sustaining of a human-derived Blastocystis ST1 and assess colonization success and longevity. Because of the broad host range of Blastocystis, we compared the rat with three other rodent species to establish the reproducibility of our method. In this study, the colonization of Blastocystis ST1 was established in 100 % of the challenged outbred rats (Rattus norvegicus) and gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus). Colonization of the experimental rats was asymptomatic for more than one year, but Blastocystis ST1 was not possible to trans-mitted between rats. Mus musculus strain CD1 and Mastomys coucha were not susceptible to Blastocystis ST1. Thus, rats appear to be a suitable in vivo model for studies of Blastocystis ST1, as do gerbils though testing was less extensive. This work lays the foundation for experimental work on the role of Blastocystis in health and disease. |
