Superimposing a high-fat diet on Schistosoma mansoni infection affects renin-angiotensin system components in the mouse kidney

Abstract

Introduction: The levels of the full-length form of the (pro)renin receptor (PRR), a component of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS), may be reduced in the membranes of kidneys in renal diseases. This study aimed to investigate the RAS components in the kidneys of mice submitted to a combination of a high-fat diet and Schistosoma mansoni infection. Methods: Female BALB/c mice were maintained on a control or high-fat diet from 3 weeks of age. After 10 weeks on the designated diets, half the mice in each group were infected with S. mansoni cercariae. The blood and kidneys were harvested 8 weeks after infection. Results: The high-fat diet increased the number of eggs in the feces and the number of adult worms in the mesenteric bed. Schistosoma mansoni infection reduced the plasma levels of glucose, triglycerides, and HDL cholesterol in the control and high-fat diet groups. In mice on the control diet, S. mansoni infection resulted in increased expression of IL-6 in the kidneys; however, in mice on the high-fat diet, the levels of IL-6 were reduced and those of superoxide anions were increased. The RAS components evaluated were ACE2, renin, PRR, AT 1 R, and AT 2 R, and the levels of PRR were found to be reduced in the kidneys of infected mice on the high-fat diet. Conclusions: The finding regarding PRR is not yet clear. However, combining a high-fat diet and S. mansoni infection resulted in increased oxidative stress in the kidney that can aggravate hypertension as well as its associated complications.

Effects of helminths and anthelmintic treatment on cardiometabolic diseases and risk factors: A systematic review

“…Forty-three of these studies reported on total cholesterol [6][7][8][13][14][15][16][17]. Of these, 28 reported on participants infected with Schistosoma species or with mixed helminths that included Schistosoma species [6,7,13,15,[25][26][27][28]30,31,35,37,[39][40][41][42][43][44]46,[48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55]. These 28 studies mostly reported that infected individuals or those challenged with helminth products had lower total cholesterol than uninfected participants.…”

“…Including all helminths in other studies, 96% (24 of 25 total studies, which consisted of 11 human and 13 animal studies with 1 mixed study) that reported a relationship between helminth infection and lower total cholesterol found this inverse association to be significant [13,17,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]33,35,[38][39][40][41]44,[46][47][48][49][50][51]54,55]. In contrast, 6 studies (14%, all with different helminths with 4 human and 2 animal studies) reported associations with increased total cholesterol [6,20,21,33,34,36], and 13 (30%, 10 human and 3 animal studies, of which 6 examined schistosome infections) demonstrated no effect of infection on total cholesterol [7,8,[14][15][16]22,23,32,36,37,42,43,53]. Notably, some studies reported differences in total cholesterol depending on factors such as duration of infection, co-morbidities, type of helminth infection, route of exposu...…”

“…More heterogeneity was observed for associations between helminth infection and HDL or triglycerides. Of the 31 studies investigating HDL [6][7][8][13][14][15][16][17]22,25,[27][28][29][30]32,[34][35][36][37]39,42,43,[46][47][48][50][51][52][53][54]56], 13 (42%; 7 human, 6 animal) found lower HDL [6,17,27,29,36,37,39,46,48,50,52,54,56], 9 (29%; 7 human, 2 animal) reported higher HDL [14,25,28,30,34,42,…”

“…Lastly, 35 studies reported on triglyceride levels with 20 showing lower triglycerides (57%; 12 human, 7 animal, 1 mixed study) [13,17,25,26,28,30,34,37,39,[41][42][43]46,48,[50][51][52][53][54]56], 3 (9%; 2 human, 1 animal) reporting higher triglycerides [29,32,36], and 15 (43%; 8 human, 7 animal) demonstrating no association with helminth infections [6][7][8][14][15][16]22,27,[34][35][36]40,[47][48][49]. The majority of these studies focused on schistosome infections.…”

“…Some of these studies reported varying trends of triglycerides in their same cohort of participants, similar to that observed in the total cholesterol and LDL studies. For example, one study documented significantly lower triglycerides in S. mansoni-infected mice that were fed normal diet, though not in those fed a high-fat diet (HFD), when compared to uninfected controls [37]. In a human study of S. mansoni infection in two regions of different schistosome endemicity in Ethiopia, no differences in triglyceride levels were seen between infected and uninfected individuals within the same region, but infected individuals in the highly endemic region had lower triglycerides than uninfected individuals in the S. mansoni-nonendemic region [48], possibly due to undiagnosed infections in the highly endemic region.…”