Genetic regulation of the antibody response to the parasite Ascris spp
Bornacelly Mendoza, Adriana | 2017
The nematode Ascaris spp. causes ascariasis in humans and pigs. Ascariasis in humans causes
anemia, growth retardation and cognitive deficit, being one of the most prevalent
helminthiases around the world. The infection in pigs is an ideal model to study
immunological aspects of ascariasis in humans. In both hosts, worm loads are aggregated,
with few individuals harboring the highest worm burden which may be attributed to genetic
factors. The locus 13q33 has been linked as a QTL for Ascaris susceptibility and total IgE in
humans being TNFSF13B (encoding for the cytokine B cell activating factor-BAFF) the
major positional candidate gene. A tagSNP in TNFSF13B was associated with the levels of
IgG to Ascaris and IgE to ABA-1 in a Colombian population but causal variants remained to
be explored. This thesis aimed to analyze the genetic regulation of the antibody response to
Ascaris including this genomic region (13q33) and other candidate regions related to type-2
(Th2) immunity, as well as to analyze the relationship between BAFF and the strength of the
antibody response to Ascaris, in order to get a better understanding of the role of
TNFSF13B/BAFF in the mechanisms of Ascaris susceptibility/resistance using human and
pig data under different purposes.
LEER