Bone marrow colony-formation in vitro after infection of genetically defined inbred mice with Candida albicans

The effect of C. albicans infection on the production of haematopoietic precursor cells in the bone marrow of CBA/CaH and BALB/c mice was evaluated by assay of colony formation in vitro. In immunocompetent mice, neither systemic nor oral infection induced significant alterations in colony formation by bone marrow from the two mouse strains, and Candida infection did not alter the proportion of morphological cell types in the colonies. However, the number of neutrophil-like was relatively greater in colonies derived from acutely infected CBA/CaH nude mice than in those from BALB/c nude mice, whereas small mononuclear cells were present in higher proportions in the latter strain. In both strains of nude mice, there was an increase in colony formation at 6 days after oral infection, but at 8 weeks, when the infection had become chronic, the production of bone marrow cells by CBA/CaH nude mice was significantly less than that by BALB/c nude mice. Reconstitution of nude mice with syngeneic lymphocytes enhanced the production of bone marrow precursor cells by BALB/c, but not by CBA/CaH mice, suggesting that T cells can enhance host resistance by promoting the colony-forming response of the bone marrow in BALB/c mice that are genetically resistant to tissue damage, but not in CBA/CaH that are prone to severe lesions. Finally, culture with Candida antigen in vitro decreased the number of colony-forming cells in cultures from CBA/CaH, but not from BALB/c mice.