In mice, an immune system overreaction to a urinary tract infection can leave the lining of the bladder pocked with clumps of inflammatory immune cells (in this image, the dark clump on the upper left). Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis showed that this can shift the balance in the bladder from a protective immune response that helps prevent infection to a damaging immune response that makes mice more vulnerable to recurrent infections.
Researchers showed in mice that severe inflammatory responses to an initial UTI cause bladder damage and allow infection to persist longer. After one to two weeks of infection, the bladder wall undergoes additional changes that leave mice more vulnerable to later infection. Suppressing the immune system during initial infection decreases these vulnerabilities, they reported Aug. 12 in PLoS Pathogens.
“We found markers in the mice that may one day help us identify patients vulnerable to recurrent infection and refine our treatment strategies,” says lead author Thomas J. Hannan, DVM, PhD. “There were infection-fighting elements in the immune responses of some mice that we may, for example, one day be able to trigger with vaccines for vulnerable patients.”
The research was conducted at the Center for Women's Infectious Disease Research at the School of Medicine.
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