Abstract
BACKGROUND: In areas endemic for visceral leishmaniasis (VL), a large number of infected individuals mount a protective cellular immune response and remain asymptomatic carriers. We propose an interferon-gamma release assay (IFN-gammaRA) as a novel marker for latent L. donovani infection. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We modified a commercial kit (QuantiFERON) evaluating five different leishmania-specific antigens; H2B, H2B-PSA2, H2B-Lepp12, crude soluble antigen (CSA) and soluble leishmania antigen (SLA) from L. donovani with the aim to detect the cell-mediated immune response in VL. We evaluated the assay on venous blood samples of active VL patients (n = 13), cured VL patients (n = 15), non-endemic healthy controls (n = 11) and healthy endemic controls (n = 19). The assay based on SLA had a sensitivity of 80% (95% CI = 54.81-92.95) and specificity of 100% (95% CI = 74.12-100). CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that a whole-blood SLA-based QuantiFERON assay can be used to measure the cell-mediated immune response in L. donovani infection. The positive IFN-gamma response to stimulation with leishmania antigen in patients with active VL was contradictory to the conventional finding of a non-proliferative antigen-specific response of peripheral blood mononuclear cells and needs further research.
Original language | English |
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Journal | PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 4 |
Pages (from-to) | e1042 |
Number of pages | 5 |
ISSN | 1935-2727 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2011 |
Keywords
- B780-tropical-medicine
- Protozoal diseases
- Kala azar
- Visceral
- Leishmaniasis
- Leishmania donovani
- Vectors
- Sandflies
- Phlebotomus argentipes
- Markers
- Latent infection
- Immune response
- Asymptomatic infections
- Antigen detection
- Evaluation
- Interferon-gamma
- Assays
- Specificity
- Sensitivity
- Laboratory techniques and procedures