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Updated: Aug 16, 2025
Assessing Functional Performance in the Mdx Mouse Model
Published on: March 27, 2014
Effect of parasitic infection on muscular function of dystrophin gene (Dmd) deficient mouse
Ha Rim Shin1, Eun-Ji Ko2, Yun-Jeong Kang2
1Department of Biomedical Sciences, Asan Medical Institute of Convergence Science and Technology, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea.
Background:
Previous studies have reported many cases of Trichinella spiralis (T. spiralis) infection in normal skeletal muscle but there is little research on T. spiralis infection in abnormal muscle tissue.
Objective:
To identify the effect of T. spiralis infection on muscular dystrophy, this study compared aspects of infection between normal (C57BL/10) and dystrophin-deficient Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) mdx mice.
Method:
Infection rate was found to be lower in mdx mice than in C57BL/10 mice at early stages of infection; however, infection and inflammation in mdx mice persisted at later stages of infection while the infection rate and inflammation in C57BL/10 mice decreased gradually. The inflammation area was proportional to the degree of infection in both groups. Muscle strength was measured by the time of latency to fall in the wire-hanging test. Hanging time was shorter in the infected group than in the uninfected group in both C57BL/10 and mdx mice.
Results:
Muscle strength was also reduced in mdx mice compared with C57BL/10 mice in both the un-infected and infected groups. The muscle intracellular cytokines TGF-β and IL-6 were continuously expressed from early stage to late-stage infection. IL-10 was strongly expressed at the early stage of infection but decreased as the infection progressed. TNF-α expression remained stable from early to late-stage infection in mdx mice, while TNF-α was elevated only during early-stage infection in C57BL/10 mice. The degree of muscle damage was significantly higher in mdx mice than in C57BL/10 mice because of the high level of serum creatine kinase (CK).
Conclusion:
These results suggest that mdx mice continued in infection and inflammation until the late stages of disease, which was in contrast to the C57BL/10 mice that recovered to some extent in the late stage of infection. In addition, that dystrophin-deficient mice are not suitable for T. spiralis infection compared to normal mice, and the degree of inflammation may be worse in mdx mice.
