Histological study of cell migration in the dermis of hamsters after immunisation with two different vaccines against visceral leishmaniasis

Vaccine candidates, including live and/or killed parasites, Leishmania-purified fractions, defined recombinant antigens and antigen-encoding DNA-plasmids have been proposed to use as vaccine anti-Leishmania. More recently, the hamsters have been used to pre-selection of antigens candidate to apply in further experiments using canine model. In this report we evaluated the kinetics of cell migration in dermal inflammatory infiltrate, circulating leukocytes and the presence of nitric oxide (NO)/induced nitric oxide synthase during the early (1–24 h) and late (48–168 h) periods following inoculation of hamsters with antigenic components of anti-canine visceral leishmaniasis vaccines Leishmune® and Leishmania braziliensis antigen (LB) with and without saponin (Sap) adjuvant. Our results show that LB caused an early reduction of lymphocytes in the dermis while Sap and LBSap triggered a late recruitment, suggesting the role of the adjuvant in the traffic of antigen-presenting cells and the induction of lymphocyte migration. In that manner our results suggest that the kinetics of cell migration on hamster model may be of value in the selection of vaccine antigens prior the tests in dogs particularly in respect of the toxicity of the preparations.