Clobetasol increases the abundance of Borrelia burgdorferi in the skin 70 times more in male mice compared to female mice

Abstract

Lyme borreliosis is caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted among vertebrate hosts by Ixodes scapularis ticks in eastern North America. Treatment with topical corticosteroids increases the abundance of B. burgdorferi in the skin of lab mice that have been experimentally infected via needle inoculation. In the present study, female and male C3H/HeJ mice were infected with B. burgdorferi via nymphal tick bite. Infected mice were treated with clobetasol on the skin of the right hindleg on days 35 and 36 post-infection and euthanized at days -2, 1, 3, 5, and 7 post-treatment; a group of control mice was infected but not treated with clobetasol. The spirochete abundance was quantified in 8 mouse tissues including bladder, heart, left hindleg skin, right hindleg skin, dorsal skin, ventral skin, left ear and right ear. Averaged across the 8 mouse tissues, the abundance of B. burgdorferi on days 3 and 5 were 21.4x and 14.4x higher in mice treated with clobetasol compared to the untreated control mice, but there were large differences among tissues. There was a dramatic sex-specific effect of the clobetasol treatment; the peak abundance of B. burgdorferi in the skin (left hindleg, right hindleg, dorsal, ventral) was 72.6x higher in male mice compared to female mice. In contrast, there was little difference between the sexes in the tissue spirochete load in the ears, bladder, and heart. Topical application of clobetasol could increase the sensitivity of direct diagnostic methods (e.g., culture, PCR) to detect B. burgdorferi in host skin biopsies.

Keywords: Borrelia burgdorferi; Corticosteroid; Immunosuppression; Lyme borreliosis; Skin; Spirochete load.