Acute Disruption of Bone Marrow B Lymphopoiesis and Apoptosis of Transitional and Marginal Zone B Cells in the Spleen following a Blood-Stage Plasmodium chabaudi Infection in Mice.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Parasitology Research Volume 2011, Article ID 534697, 11 pages doi:10.1155/2011/534697 Research Article Acute Disruption of Bone Marrow B Lymphopoiesis and Apoptosis of Transitional and Marginal Zone B Cells in the Spleen following a Blood-Stage Plasmodium chabaudi Infection in Mice Viki Bockstal,1, 2 Nathalie Geurts,3 and Stefan Magez1, 2 1 Laboratory for Cellular and Molecular Immunology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium 2 Department of Molecular and Cellular Interactions, VIB, Brussels, Belgium 3 Laboratory of Immunobiology, Rega Institute for Medical Research, University of Leuven, Minderbroedersstraat 10, 3000 Leuven, Belgium Correspondence should be addressed to Viki Bockstal, viki.bockstal@vub.ac.be Received 31 December 2010; Accepted 25 February 2011 Academic Editor: Alvin A. Gajadhar Copyright © 2011 Viki Bockstal et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. B cells and antibodies are essential for the protective immune response against a blood-stage Plasmodium infection. Although extensive research has focused on memory as well as plasma B-cell responses during infection, little is known about how malaria affects B-cell development and splenic maturation into marginal zone B (MZB) and follicular B (FoB) cells. In this study, we show that acute Plasmodium chabaudi AS infection in C57Bl/6 mice causes severe disruption of B lymphopoiesis in the bone marrow, affecting in particular pro-, pre-, and immature B cells as well as the expression of the bone marrow B-cell retention chemokine CXCL12. In addition, elevated apo