Differential pattern of infection and i immune response during experimental oral candidiasis in BALB/c and DBA/2 (H‐2d) mice

摘要

We used an experimental model of oral candidiasis in the mouse to investigate the impact of the introduction of Candida albicans into a Candida‐free system. We report that 2 strains of mice with the same major histocompatibility complex haplolype (H‐2d) display different kinetics of primary oral infection after topical application of the same inoculum. The mucosal reactions in both DBA/2 and BALB/c mice involve a similar recruitment of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and of MAC‐1 + cells in mucosal tissue during the infection. A carrier state is maintained following the resolution of the infection in both strains and is associated with the persistence ofintraepithelial CD4+ T cells. However, there is a time‐specific recruitment of y6 T cells that coincides with a dramatic decrease in viable Candida in the mucosal tissue; this occurs on day 3 in BALB/c mice and on day 6 in DBA/2 mice. The denouement of an oral contact with Candida is also different in the 2 mouse strains, cell‐mediated immunity being triggered in DBA/2 mice but not in BALB/c mice. The different kinetics of Candida clearance in BALB/c vs DBA/2 mice may therefore signal a differential priming of T cell subsets whose modalities do not appear to be associated with the H