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Vargas School of Medicine, Central University of Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela
1 Correspondence: Jet Internacional M-154, PO Box 020010, Miami, FL 33102, USA. E-mail: mgoihman{at}cantv.net
It was very interesting to read the paper "Neutrophil role in pulmonary paracoccidioidomycosis depends on the resistance pattern of hosts," by Pina et al., published in the June 2006 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology [1 ]. The authors indicated that neutrophils are important in defense mechanisms in experimental murine paracoccidioidomycosis (EXP PARA), but only in resistant hosts. This was shown by the finding that depleting animals of neutrophils (PMNs) decreased survival times, but only in animals belonging to resistant strains.
There were many more facets to that well written paper, but the authors did tend to stress the uniqueness of their results. I find it rather strange that Pina et al. did not cite any of a long series of papers published quite some time ago by our group. These papers made reference to polymorphonuclear- and phagocyte-Paracoccidioides brasiliensis interaction. They stressed the lack of digestive and killing capacities of PMNs from patients with the disease (susceptible individuals) in stark contrast with abilities of cells from healthy (resistant) individuals.
Allow me to name and summarize findings of several key papers of that series. We first devised a method to accurately estimate the digestion of P. brasiliensis by phagocytic cells [2 ]. Then, we found out that PMNs from patients with PARA had a defect of digestive ability against P. brasiliensis and that this defect was specific concerning the fungus [3 ]. We then designed a method to detect killing abilities of PMNs (in addition to digestion) against P. brasiliensis [4 ]. PMNs from patients with PARA were also deficient in their killing abilities against the fungus; but killing and digestion were found to be different phenomena [5 ]. PMNs from a patient with Jorge Lobo’s disease (a rare intracellular mycosis related to PARA) digested P. brasiliensis well, giving further credence to the specificity of the defect [6 ]. Serum did not play a role in the deficiency of digestive and killing abilities [7 ]. PMNs from healthy members of the nuclear family of patients kept a normal digestive ability [8 ]. A review stressing our viewpoints about phagocytes and the pathogenesis of PARA was also published [9 ]. Finally, an ultrastructural study of alveolar macrophages from patients with PARA and other diseases revealed low expression of the MHC II molecule in the former [10 ].
It could be argued that Pina et al. were referring only to findings in murine experimental PARA and thus had no need to cite our work. I do not find this admissible. After all, the main interest of experimental murine PARA (there is no natural occurring murine PARA) is to understand pathogenesis and other features of the human disease. It is rather unfair to ignore a long-established line of published research.
Received November 5, 2005; revised November 25, 2006; accepted December 14, 2006.
REFERENCES
disease. Absence of the specific leukocyte digestive defect against Paracoccidioides brasiliensis Mycoses 32,603-608[Medline]Related Articles
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