Taenia crassiceps cysticercosis: immune response in susceptible and resistant BALB/c mouse substrains

Taenia crassiceps can naturally and experimentally infect rodents in which they reproduce by budding. Differences in the susceptibility to T. crassiceps cysticercosis were found between two BALB/c substrains: BALB/cAnN (susceptible) and BALB/cJ (resistant). In chimeric mice, resistance was transferred to susceptible mice with bone marrow cells from the resistant mice, which argues in favor of an immune mediation of the resistant phenotype. To further explore the immune response that could underlie these differences in susceptibility, the specific cellular immune response elicited by the parasite was explored in both substrains. An increased proliferative response and IL-2 levels were induced by cysticercal antigens only in splenocytes from resistant mice. A decrease in the percentage of CD4⁺ (11.1%), CD8⁺ (17.5%) was found in splenocytes from susceptible BALB/cAnN mice. A study of the TCRVβ repertoire revealed a significant decrease in Vβ2 in both CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ splenocytes only in the susceptible BALB/cAnN strain.