International Trends in Immunity

Schistosomiasis, a disease caused by the trematodes of the Schistosoma genus, affects about 240 million people worldwide. The Praziquantel (PZQ) is the drug used to treat this disease. However, reports of resistant strains reinforce the need to develop a new schistosomicidal drug. The study of new drugs and vaccines that can contribute to the control of this pathology becomes urgent. A new approach can be held by the study of the following Schistosoma mansoni enzymes: purine nucleoside phosphorilase 1 (PNP), hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HGPRT) and adenylate kinase 1 (ADK). The parasite, incapable of synthetizing purine nucleotides through the de novo pathway, has multiple mechanisms to incorporate purine bases through the purine salvage pathway. Our goal was to assess, through immunoenzimatic assay (ELISA-indirect), the production of total IgG, IgE and IgG2a in the plasma after immunization with the PNP, HGPRT and ADK enzymes, using the S. mansoni cercariae – infected murine model. Our results showed that the immunization in Balb/c mice with the enzymes mentioned above induced production of the immunoglobulines at the 48 th and 85 th days, post-infection. Thereby, new assays must be made for a better assessment on how these enzymes modulate an