Efeito da vitamina D na atividade microbicida de macrófagos a linhagens de Mycobacterium bovis

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) is the second leading cause of death from infectious disease worldwide. The Mycobacterium bovis is one of the TB causing agent that disperses when the infected person coughs or sneezes releasing droplets containing mycobacteria. This mycobacteria have a preference for tissues well oxygenated such as lungs where they will develop the infection, initiating the immune response. One of the first cell types involved in controlling the infection are the resident macrophages which will phagocytose mycobacteria and within the phagosome, producing reactive species nitrogen and oxygen in an attempt to destroy the pathogen, in addition to cytokines production, which construct the acquired immune response. TB treatment is done by the use of antibiotics, but in the pre-antibiotic period, vitamin D was used as a treatment. Vitamin D is a steroid hormone that has been shown to affect the immune response to infectious diseases such as TB by catalecidina production. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of vitamin D in the microbicidal activity of macrophages infected with the attenuated (BCG) and virulent (ATCC19274) strains of M. bovis. For this study were used cell line RAW 264.7 infected with the BCG strains and ATCC19274, treated with 1nM, 10nM and 100nM of the active form of vitamin D. The cell viability test showed that the concentrations used are non-toxic. Through ELISA we observed that vitamin D tends to decrease the production of IL-6 and IL-10 cytokines. The bacilli count after Ziehl-Neelsen staining demonstrated that there is a reduction in bacterial load in proportion to the concentration of vitamin D, confirming the reduction of viability of bacteria determined by counting CFU. The dosage of nitric oxide (NO) showed increased proportional to the concentration of vitamin D. We can conclude that a reduction in bacterial load and CFU count may be a result of treatment with vitamin D that affects some microbicidal mechanism of macrophage, and that this mechanism affected by vitamin D may be nitric oxide production.