Effects of compromising agents on candidosis in mice with persistent infections initiated in infancy

Oral-intragastric inoculation of infant CFW mice with Candida albicans, leading either to lethality or to persistent infection of long duration, provides a useful model for study of the host-pathogen interrelationships in candidosis. Mice were most susceptible to the lethal effects of challenge when 4 to 6 days of age, increasingly resistant up to 10 to 11 days, and then resistant to doses of C. albicans lethal for the younger animals. Older mice harboring persistent infections of the gastrointestinal tract, originally initiated when the animals were 6 days old, were used to study the effects of agents which commonly are administered to cancer patients or which are known to predispose to candidosis. The broad-spectrum antibiotic chloramphenicol, cortisone acetate, X-irradiation, or single high doses of cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan) resulted in markedly enhanced levels of C. albicans in the gastrointestinal tract without systemic spread. Repeated smaller doses of Cytoxan, or treatment with methotrexate or a combination of cortisone acetate and Cytoxan, produced gastrointestinal candidosis associated with invasion and systemic spread. The data indicate that the persistently infected animals provide a realistic model for studying treatments that precipitate candidosis in humans.