Contribution of the dopaminergic system in toxoplasmic encephalitis neuroimmunopathogenesis

• Tuğçe Anteplıoğlu ^[4] ; Gungor Cagdas Dincel ^[5] ; Mehmet Eray Alçiğir ^[4] ; Merve Bışkın Türkmen ^[4] ; Tilbe Su Yapici ^[4] ; Oğuz Kul ^[4] ; Ebtsam Al-Olayan ^[1] ; Mohammad Y. Alshahrani ^[2] ; Saeed El-Ashram ^[3]
  1. [1] King Saud University

     King Saud University

     Arabia Saudí

     
  2. [2] King Khalid University

     King Khalid University

     Arabia Saudí

     
  3. [3] Kafrelsheikh University

     Kafrelsheikh University

     Egipto

     
  4. [4] Kirikkale University, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Pathology, Kirikkale, Turkey
  5. [5] Faculty of Medicine, Ankara Medipol University, Ankara, Turkey

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• Localización: Histology and histopathology: cellular and molecular biology, ISSN-e 1699-5848, ISSN 0213-3911, Vol. 40, Nº. 8, 2025, págs. 1227-1237
• Idioma: inglés
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  • Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii), a parasitic intracellular protozoan, can establish a chronic infection in the host brain and cause significant neuropathology.

    The current study aimed to determine the role of Tyrosine Hydroxylase (TH), Dopamine Receptor D1 (D1R), Nuclear Receptor Related-1 (Nurr1), and Dopamine Transporter (DAT) expression in the neuroimmunopathogenesis of toxoplasmic encephalitis (TE) at 15, 30, 45, and 60 days after infection with T.

    gondii. Additionally, the study investigated whether there was a correlation between the markers on these critical days, which had yet to be explored. The results showed that TH expression in brain tissue of BALB/c mice was significantly increased in all infected groups compared with healthy controls (p<0.05). However, other striking findings of the study were that D1R, DAT, and Nurr1 expression were significantly decreased in all infected groups compared with healthy controls, in contrast to TH expression (p<0.05). Study findings regarding behavioral changes in chronic T. gondiiinfected laboratory animals and humans with TE provide important evidence of the relationship between neuropsychiatric diseases and T. gondii infection. By elucidating the pathogenesis of the disease in detail, treatment protocols that consider these coordinated changes in expression that vary from day to day can be developed.