Expression and Analysis of CXCL8 and CXCL10 Chemokines in Human SkinLesions Infected with M.leprae

This study is focused to analyze the expression profile of CXCL8 and CXCL10 chemokines genes and to address the contribution of these chemokines in late phase of M.leprae infection in human skin lesion samples. In this study skin biopsy samples from leprosy patients (n=35) were collected including BL-LL=12, BB=14, BT=8 and healthy volunteers (n=3). All the biopsy samples were collected in RNALater for mRNA expression study as well as 10% buffered formalin (BF) for histopathologic analysis. Total RNA was isolated from collected samples and cDNA was prepared. Level of mRNA expression of CXCL8 and CXCL10 chemokine genes was measured via q-PCR and insitu RT-PCR to locate the presence of CXCL8 and CXCL10 chemokines inside M. leprae infected tissue. The mRNA expression of CXCL8 was found relatively elevated in lepromatous (BL-LL) skin samples significantly as compared to BB category of leprosy; whereas in BT cases down-regulation was recorded. CXCL10 mRNA expression was found elevated in lepromatous (BL-LL) cases than other cases (BT, BB) of leprosy samples. In histopathological examination, 59.38% maximum infiltration was observed in BL-LL cases of leprosy and in-situ RT-PCR confirmed the presence of chemokines genes in tissue sections. Interestingly, chemokines CXCL-10 and CXCL-8 showed elevated expression in BL-LL category. The study advocated that CXCL10 and CXCL-8 possibly may have a role in lepromatous (BL-LL) form of leprosy.