Susceptibility of Mus musculus musculus (Czech I) Mice to Salmonella typhimurium Infection

Abstract

When inbred or outbred mice are challenged with Salmonella typhimurium, they develop a disease which is similar in its pathogenesis to typhoid fever in man. Whether the animals ultimately survive the infection depends on the virulence of the bacterial strain, the route of challenge, and the genetic constitution of the mice. Although mice of some inbred strains and many outbred strains survive parenteral inoculation with up to 10,000 virulent salmonellae, mice of other inbred strains invariably succumb to low-dose (< 10 bacteria) challenge. Several distinct host genes have been identified which regulate this differential susceptibility to murine typhoid. Some of these genes act early in the course of the disease (Ity, Lps, and the C3HeB/FeJ gene), and mice that express the, susceptibility allele at any one of these loci (e.g., Ity ^S or Lps ^d) usually die by day 10 of infection with a virulent strain of S. typhimurium (Plant and Glynn 1976; Hormaeche 1979; O’Brien et al. 1980, O’Brien and Rosenstreich 1983).