Time course of mycobacterial infection of dendritic cells in the lungs of intranasally infected mice

Summary Setting : Dendritic cells (DC) could regulate between the protective and pathogenic immune responses following tuberculous infection. In this paper we investigated if their early infection in the lungs represents a plausible alternative to cross-priming with mycobacterial antigens acquired from infected macrophages. Objective : To determine the extent and time course of infection of lung DCs following intranasal inoculation of BALB/c mice with green fluorescent protein (GFP) tagged Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG). Results : A fraction of GFP-BCG infected lung cells were classified as monocytic DCs with the CD11c + IA + 33D1 + CD8a − phenotype. These cells represented 5–18% of the tot…