A Vitamina D como potencializadora da atividade antiparasitária de macrófagos na infecção in vitro por Trypanosoma cruzi

Abstract

Chagas disease is a major health problem, especially in South and Central American regions and its known by the World Health Organization as a neglected disease, being related to human poverty and presenting a high ratio of death. Vitamin D is a hormone metabolized in the skin that can be supplemented trough ingestion and presents several functions on human organism, among which, for example, induction of bone calcification. Besides that, it’s well known today that the vitamin D present important roles in the immune system regulation and homeostasis, having an immunosuppressant character and the ability to induce antimicrobial compounds production. In this study, we evaluated vitamin D role in the experimental infection in peritoneal macrophages of C57/BL6 mice, with Trypanosoma cruzi, during 24 hours, being that for this, this groups received also for 24 hours, treatment with this vitamin. Our results showed that vitamin D was able to induce in our macrophage culture, reduced formation of lipid bodies organelles, reduced production of IL 10 and increased expression of iNOS, an enzyme capable of producing antimicrobials compounds, and arginase. We have also shown that vitamin D is able to prevent the translocation of the nuclear PPAR-γ receptor to the cell nucleus. This receptor participates in the transcription of several genes controlling lipid metabolism and formation of lipid droplets, which may be the way in which vitamin D enables macrophages to eliminate T.cruzi. The use of agonists to activate the PPAR-γ pathway partially reverses the effects observed on these cells by treatment with vitamin D. As a consequence of these alterations, our treatment has shown to reduce almost totally the parasite load in our treated groups. In general, our data indicate that the specific action of vitamin D in macrophages infected with T.cruzi is capable of inducing a more effective and specific action of the same for the elimination of this microorganism, being therefore a probable indicator factor of a good prognosis of the disease.