Early Colonization of the Upper Genital Tract by Chlamydia muridarum Is Associated with Enhanced Inflammation Later in Infection.

Abstract

is the most commonly reported bacterial sexually transmitted infection in the United States. Modeling infection in animals can be challenging, as mice naturally clearwhen it is deposited in the lower genital tract. However,can productively infect mice when the lower genital tract is bypassed and bacteria are deposited directly into the upper genital tract via transcervical inoculation. Interestingly, the mouse-adaptedspeciescan infect mice both by transcervical inoculation and by natural ascension if introduced into the vaginal vault. In this study, we investigated whether the route of infection plays a role in the downstream immune responses toinfection. We found that transcervical infection withresults in higher bacterial burdens in the upper genital tract at earlier time points, correlating with levels of innate immune cells. When bacterial burdens were equivalent in intravaginally and transcervically infected mice at later time points, we observed substantially higher levels of adaptive immune cells in transcervically infected mice. Our data suggest that different routes of infection with the same organism can elicit different immune responses in the same tissue.