Antibacterial resistance in mice infected with Mycobacterium lepraemurium.

The differences in susceptibility among C57Bl/6, DBA/2 mice and their F1 hybrids to infections with M. lepraemurium were shown to depend upon the route of infection and size of the inoculum. A method was developed to measure the ability of lymphocytes obtained from M. lepraemurium-infected donors to effect adoptive immunization of syngeneic naive mice against infection with M. tuberculosis. This required sublethal irradiation of recipient mice prior to cell transfer and bacterial challenge. Using this method, it was found that mice infected subcutaneously generated antituberculous immune mechanisms concordantly with the development of delayed-hypersensitivity to antigens of M. lepraemurium. In contrast, intravenously infected mice demonstrated only a transient from of delayed hypersensitivity and little or no antimycobacterial immunity in that progression of infection was associated with a rapid decay of both these functions. Moreover, during the terminal stage, M. lepraemurium-infected mice lost the ability to control the growth of a sublethal intravenous inoculum of the antigenically unrelated bacterium. Listeria monocytogenes.