The in vitro effects of interferon-gamma, alone or in combination with amphotericin B, tested against the pathogenic fungi Candida albicans and Aspergillus fumigatus

Autor: Moufid El-Khoury, Rogine Ligot, Simon Mahoney, Colin M. Stack, Gabriel G. Perrone, C. Oliver Morton
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: BMC Research Notes, Vol 10, Iss 1, Pp 1-6 (2017)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1756-0500
DOI: 10.1186/s13104-017-2696-4
Popis: Abstract Objective Recent studies into the antifungal activity of NK-cells against the Aspergillus fumigatus have presented differing accounts on their mode of antifungal activity. One of these mechanisms proposed that NK-cells may kill the fungus via the direct effects of exposure to Interferon gamma (IFN-γ). Results In this study we investigated the direct antifungal effects of recombinant human IFN-γ against a range of pathogenic fungi by measuring cellular damage using an XTT-based assay and cell viability through plate counts. It was found that 32 pg/ml of IFN-γ exhibited a significant but small antifungal effect on A. fumigatus (p = 0.02), Aspergillus flavus (p = 0.04) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (p = 0.03), inhibiting growth by 6, 11 and 17% respectively. No significant inhibitory effects were observed in Candida species (p > 0.05 for all species tested) or Cryptococus neoformans (p = 0.98). Short term exposure (3 h) to a combination of amphotericin B (1 µg/ml) and IFN-γ (32 pg/ml) increased the effectiveness of amphotericin B against A. fumigatus and S. cerevisiae but not Candida albicans. These data suggest that IFN-γ does not possess strong antifungal activity but can enhance the effect of amphotericin B under some testing conditions against Aspergillus species.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals