Primary Babesia rodhaini infection followed by recovery confers protective immunity against B. rodhaini reinfection and Babesia microti challenge infection in mice

In the present study, we investigated the protective immunity against challenge infections with Babesia rodhaini and Babesia microti in the mice recovered from B. rodhaini infection. Six groups with 5 test mice in each group were used in this study, and were intraperitoneally immunized with alive and dead B. rodhaini. The challenge infections with B. rodhaini or B. microti were performed using different time courses. Our results showed that the mice recovered from primary B. rodhaini infection exhibited low parasitemia and no mortalities after the challenge infections, whereas mock mice which had received no primary infection showed a rapid increase of parasitemia and died within 7 days after the challenge with B. rodhaini. Mice immunized with dead B. rodhaini were not protected against either B. rodhaini or B. microti challenge infections, although high titers of antibody response were induced. These results indicate that only mice immunized with alive B. rodhaini could acquire protective immunity against B. rodhaini or B. microti challenge infection. Moreover, the test mice produced high levels of antibody response and low levels of cytokines (INF-γ, IL-4, IL-12, IL-10) against B. rodhaini or B. microti after challenge infection. Mock mice, however, showed rapid increases of these cytokines, which means disordered cytokines secretion occurred during the acute stage of challenge infection. The above results proved that mice immunized with alive B. rodhaini could acquire protective immunity against B. rodhaini and B. microti infections.