Establishing Airway Allergy and Infection Models in Mice and Rats

For establishment of the airway allergy model, female C57 mice were chosen, and Alternaria alternata (Greerlabs, Lenoir, NC, 100 g/mouse in 50 μL) or PBS (50 μL) was administered intranasally on four consecutive days [27 (link)]. Four hours before the daily Alternaria alternata administration, 50 μg soluble rat-derived antigens of AC larvae (L4) or an equal volume of PBS treatment was administered via nasal drip. On the day after the last intranasal stimulation, mice were euthanized and BAL was harvested. Then, the cells derived from BAL were stained by Siglec F PE (BD), CD11c PE-Cyanine5 (eBioscience), or CD45 APC-cy7 (Biolegend) and analyzed by flow cytometry [28 (link)]. For the AC infection model, each Sprague-Dawley rat and BALB/c mouse were orally infected with 100 and 30 AC larvae (L3), respectively. AC larvae (L3) were collected from the tissue of infected Biomphalaria glabrata as previously described [29 (link)]. The mice and Sprague-Dawley rats were euthanized on days 7, 14, 21, and 28 after infection with AC.