In vivo albendazole treatment of Taenia crassiceps cysticerci strain WFU: proliferation, damage, and recovery

Abstract

Taenia crassiceps has been widely experimented as a model for in vitro and in vivo studies on drug responses. The purpose of this study was to treat BALB/c mice infected with T. crassiceps strain WFU with commercially available albendazole and to analyze the reduction in parasite infrapopulations. Here, we describe the reduction and apparent damage of T. crassicceps WFU cysticerci in infected mice after antihelminthic drug treatment and subsequent inoculation of those treated parasites into a naïve host. We were able to reduce significantly the parasite counts to 33 and 48% after albendazole treatment for 20 or 25 days and compared with the untreated mice. We also observed morphological damage such as the partial blebbing in the tegument and parenchyma of treated parasites, as well as disorganized musculature and the loss of cell membranes in subtegumental tissue section. However, larvae from albendazole-treated mice inoculated into the next host were able to become re-established in the next murine host due, probably, to the survival of proliferative parasite cells.

Murine cysticercosis model: Influence of the infection time and the time of treatment on the cysticidal efficacy of albendazole and praziquantel

“…With regard to the number of parasites, we used 30 cysticerci in order to ensure their proliferation and correct setting in the peritoneum of the mouse. It has been found that cysts can be damaged during the inoculation procedure (Fragoso et al, 2012;Zurabian et al, 2013). In the present study, the use of 14-gauge needle for inoculation allowed a successful establishment and proliferation of the parasites in all mice.…”

“…Also, animal experimentation is an important tool to determine the effectiveness of new drugs in development, including its efficacy and security. Although different strains of T. crassiceps have been used as an alternative model to T. solium for the study of topics such as immunology, genetic, and metabolic pathways (Willms and Zurabian, 2010), only the ORF and WFU strains have been used for the in vivo evaluation of the efficacy of androgens (proposed as anti-parasitic molecules) (Carrero et al, 2010), cysticidal drugs (Zurabian et al, 2013) and new formulations of ABZ (Palomares-Alonso et al, 2010).…”

“…Zurabian et al (2013) evaluated the effect of a dose of ABZ of 32 mg/kg/day on the reduction and apparent damage of T. crassiceps WFU cysticerci. Spicher et al (2008) administered ABZ at 50 and 200 mg/kg for the in vivo treatment of murine echinococcosis during 6 weeks.…”

“…To date, the evaluation of the in vivo efficacy of new cysticidal drug treatments has been performed using T. crassiceps WFU strain (Palomares-Alonso et al, 2010;Zurabian et al, 2013); however, this strain shows a gradual loss of its infective ability after serial consecutive peritoneal passage in mice (Zurabian et al, 2008), which has not been reported for the ORF strain. Therefore, we selected the experimental infection model of T. crassiceps ORF in mice as a suitable model for the screening of new cysticidal drugs.…”

Unusual cases of Taenia crassiceps cysticercosis in naturally infected animals in the Czech Republic

“…Successful strategies include extensive surgical interventions and protracted anthelminthic drug therapy. Experiments in mice showed a significant reduction of cysticerci after prolonged 20-and 25-day administration of albendazole (Zurabian et al 2013). In human medicine, the synergistic action of praziquantel and albendazole was employed to successfully treat infection (Garcia et al 2011;Fraga et al 2012;Anikpeh et al 2014).…”