Repositori URV

Identificador: TDX:484

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX484

Autores:
Ortoneda Pedrola, Montserrat

Resumen:
Deep infections caused by moulds have increased during the last years, and especially those caused by opportunistic fungi. These fungi use to provoke infections in patients with underlying diseases such as leukaemia, AIDS, cancer, and solid organ or bone marrow transplant recipients. The number of fungal species involved in deep infections increases every day, and the strategies to treat these infections are still limited. The three genera of filamentous fungi that have been studied in the present thesis Fusarium, Scedosporium and Paecilomyces are included in the group of emerging opportunistic pathogens. Even though they just provoke severe infections in immunocompromised patients, the mortality rate is close to 100%. Amphotericin B has been for many years, and is still nowadays, the most used drug to treat the systemic infections, but it has important toxicity problems. In recent years newer formulations of the drug have been developed, which show less toxicity problems. The main objective of the present thesis has been to evaluate the efficacy of one of the newer formulations of amphotericin B, the liposomal preparation, in murine models of disseminated infection.To be able to compare both treatments we previously developed reproducible animal models of infection (using mice) that could simulate the human infection, for each one of the strains. This was in order to compare the efficacy of both formulations of amphotericin B, in the treatment of the infections caused by the studied fungi. This was evaluated by comparing using statistic methods the mean survival time of the different groups of mice (MST). We also compared the tissue burden of the fungi in several target organs of mice, which were sacrificed after the treatment. In addition to amphotericin B which is, a