Chemokine expression in patients with different clinical forms of Chagas disease
Chagas’ disease. Trypanosoma cruzi. Chemokines. Chemokine receptors. Clinical forms.
Chemokines act in the recruitment and accumulation of leukocytes during the inflammatory process and plays an important role in the development of the different clinical forms of Chagas’ disease. The aim of this study was to evaluate the mRNA expression of chemokines (CCL1, CCL2, CCL3, CCL4, CCL5, CCL17, CCL22, CCL24, CCL27, CCL28, CXCL9, CXCL10) and chemokine receptors (CCR2, CCR3, CCR4, CCR5, CCR6, CCR7, CCR8, CCR10, CXCR3) in chronic chagasic patients with indeterminate (n=18), cardiac (n=17), digestive (n=15) and cardiodigestive (n=15) clinical forms. The mRNA expression was performed in peripheral-blood mononuclear cells by real-time PCR. Patients with the cardiac form displayed higher mRNA expression of CXCL9, CXCL10, CXCR3 and CCR5, than patients with indeterminate form. On the other hand, patients with the digestive form showed high expression of CCR3, when compared to patients with indeterminate and cardiac clinical forms of the disease. In addition there was possible a positively correlation beteween CCR3 mRNA expression and sigmoid dimension. The chemokine CCL5 had higher mRNA expression in cardiodigestive patients compared to those with the cardiac and indeterminate forms. The chemokines CCL1, CCL2, CCL3, CCL4, CCL17, CCL22, CCL24, CCL27, CCL28, and the chemokine receptors CCR2, CCR4, CCR6, CCR7, CCR8 and CCR10 did not show significant differences in mRNA expression among the patients with the different clinical forms. CXCL9, CXCL10, CXCR3 and CCR5 participate in the migration of Th1-profile cells and the high expression in patients with chagasic cardiomyopathy indicates their contribution in the cardiac inflammatory process. Patients with digestive form showed high of CCR3 mRNA expression which is involved with Th2 immune profile, indicating possible polarization for this profile in development of digestive form of disease.