Role of COX-2 in Pathogenesis of Intestinal Cryptosporidiosis and Effect of some Drugs on Treatment of Infection

Effects of Echinacea Purpurea on Cryptosporidiosis in Immunosuppressed Experimentally Infected Mice

“…The endogenous developmental stages of Cryptosporidium were easily seen either on the tip of the villi or within the epithelium with mean 31.72 ±4.14. These histopathological changes were in accordance with previous studies by Ollivett et al, [53] , Sadek and El-Aswad, [13] and Mahmood et al, [54] who recorded nearly the same results. Moreover, IL-17 immunohistochemical staining of GI showed strong grade of positivity in 100% of the covering epithe-lium with positive cytoplasmic staining in 374.0 ± 47.7 of infiltrating chronic inflammatory cells in lamina propria.…”

“…Nitazoxanide significantly reduced both parameters when compared to GI or GII. This was in accordance with Sadek and El Aswad, [13] who reported 7.13 and 6.18 as mean oocyst shedding and mean endogenous developmental stages, respectively in NTZ treated mice which were significantly less than those of the positive control group. E. purpurea extract caused cure rate of 42.1% that showed insignificant difference when compared to NTZ (68.4%), it obvi-ously improved the histopathological abnormalities in ileum stained sections.…”

“…In this study, mortality rate of the positive control group (GI) was 10%. This was in accordance with Sadek and El-Aswad, [13] who related this percentage either to Cryptosporidium infection itself or to immunosuppression state of mice that cause more severe course of infection. The mean oocyst shedding in this group was 18.88 ± 4.36 which was near those obtained by previous studies that insured high Cryptosporidium oocyst shedding in the immunocompromized mice [38,[50][51][52] .…”

“…Regarding Cox-2 stain, most sections (77.8%) showed moderate expression of Cox-2 in epithelial cells as well as diffuse expression in inflammatory cells in lamina propria. These results were supported by Assad and Sadek, [57] & Sadek and El-Aswad [13] who considered a strong relation between Cox-2 expression and C. parvum infection. They reported that Cox-2 mediates Cryptosporidium induced inflammatory responses.…”

“…Sadek and El-Aswad, [13] reported that Cryptosporidium infection is associated with elevation of many cytokines which are the key stimulators of prostaglandin secretion. Also, cyclooxygenase-2 (Cox-2) enzyme is essential for the synthesis of these prostaglandins.…”