Sex Matters: Male Hamsters Are More Susceptible to Lethal Infection with Lower Doses of Pathogenic Leptospira than Female Hamsters

Abstract

A somewhat contradictory published body of evidence suggests that sex impacts severity outcomes of human leptospirosis. In this study, we used an acute animal model of disease to analyze leptospirosis in male and female hamsters infected side by side with low but increasing doses of Leptospira interrogans serovar Copenhageni. We found that male hamsters were considerably more susceptible to leptospirosis, given that only 6.3% survived infection, whereas 68.7% of the females survived the same infection doses. In contrast to the females, male hamsters had high burdens of L. interrogans in kidney and high histopathological scores after exposure to low infection doses (∼10³ bacteria). In hamsters infected with higher doses of L. interrogans (∼10⁴ bacteria), differences in pathogen burdens as well as cytokine and fibrosis transcript levels in kidney were not distinct between sexes. Our results indicate that male hamsters infected with L. interrogans are more susceptible to severe leptospirosis after exposure to lower infectious doses than females.

Keywords: Leptospira interrogans; acute; acute leptospirosis; hamster; lethal; male; sex.