Impact of Angiostrongylus vasorum on host blood transcriptome

Angiostrongylus vasorum, also called the French heartworm, is a nematode parasite of dogs and wild carnivores such as red foxes, causing a range of clinical signs with potentially fatal outcomes. Besides various clinical manifestations, coagulopathies may arise in infected animals. Dogs showing coagulation deficiency are also more prone to die as a result of the infection. Our aim was to validate the previously formulated hypotheses to explain bleeding disorders and possibly link them within a connected network of events. Global gene expression profiling provide a molecular description reflecting the contribution of the different cellular responses associated with bleeding disorders. To achieve this, deep RNA sequencing was employed for transcriptomic profiling of dog blood cells from three groups: i) A. vasorum-infected with bleeding disorder, ii) A. vasorum-infected without bleeding disorder; iii) uninfected.