Clinical Effects of Gamma-Radiation-Resistant Aspergillus sydowii on Germ-Free Mice Immunologically Prone to Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Abstract EN

We report and investigated a case of inadvertent contamination of 125 mice (housed in two germ-free positive-pressurized isolators) with emerging human and coral pathogen Aspergillus sydowii.

The infected mice correspond to genetic line SAMP1/YitFc, which have 100% immune predisposition to develop Crohn’s disease-like spontaneous pathologies, namely, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

Pathogen update based on a scoping review of the literature and our clinical observations and experimentation are discussed.

The unwanted infection of germ-free mice (immunologically prone to suffer chronic inflammation) with human pathogen A.

sydowii resulted in no overt signs of clinical disease over 3-week exposure period, or during DSS-induced colitis experiments.

Results and observations suggest that A.

sydowii alone has limited clinical effect in immunocompromised germ-free mice or that other commensal microbial flora is required for Aspergillus-associated disease to occur.