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Abstract：
Dental caries is a prevalent oral disease that mainly results from Streptococcus mutans. Susceptibility to S. mutans decreased rapidly after weaning in a well-known rat model. However, owing to the lack of time to establish protective immunity ahead of challenge, the weaning rat model is suboptimal for assessing prophylactic vaccines against S. mutans infection. In this study, we found that, in adult rats, S. mutans cultured under air-restricted conditions showed dramatically increased colonization efficacy and accelerated development of dental caries compared with those cultured under air-unrestricted conditions. We propose that S. mutans cultured under air-restricted conditions can be used to develop an optimal caries model, especially for the evaluation of prophylactic efficacy against S. mutans. Therefore, we used the anti-caries vaccine, KFD2-rPAc, to reevaluate the protection against the challenge of S. mutans. In immunized rats, rPAc-specific protective antibodies were robustly elicited by KFD2-rPAc before the challenge. In addition to inhibiting the initial and long-term colonization of S. mutans in vivo, KFD2-rPAc immunization showed an 83% inhibitory efficacy against the development of caries, similar to that previously evaluated in a weaning rat model. These results demonstrate that culturing under air-restricted conditions can promote S. mutans infection in adult rats, thereby helping establish a rat infection model to evaluate the prophylactic efficacy of vaccines and anti-caries drugs.
摘要：
龋齿是一种常见的口腔疾病，主要由变形链球菌引起。在众所周知的大鼠模型中，断奶后对变形链球菌的易感性迅速降低。然而,由于缺乏时间在挑战之前建立保护性免疫，断奶大鼠模型对于评估针对变形链球菌感染的预防性疫苗并不理想。在这项研究中,我们发现,在成年大鼠中，与在无空气限制条件下培养的那些相比,在空气限制条件下培养的变形链球菌显示出显著增加的定殖功效和加速的龋齿发展。我们建议在空气限制条件下培养的变形链球菌可用于开发最佳龋齿模型，特别是用于评估对变形链球菌的预防功效。因此,我们使用了防龋疫苗,KFD2-rPAc,重新评估对S.mutans挑战的保护。在免疫大鼠中，rPAc特异性保护性抗体在攻击前由KFD2-rPAc稳健地引发。除了抑制变异链球菌在体内的初始和长期定植外，KFD2-rPAc免疫显示对龋齿的发展有83％的抑制作用，与先前在断奶大鼠模型中评估的相似。这些结果表明，在空气限制条件下培养可以促进成年大鼠的变形链球菌感染。从而帮助建立大鼠感染模型来评价疫苗和防龋药物的预防效果。
