Dados do Trabalho

Título

Employing phage-exposed epitopes with high sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing concurrent visceral leishmaniasis and human immunodeficiency virus infection

Introdução

The diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) has been enhanced with the discovery of new antigens. However, their efficacy is limited when samples from patients coinfected with VL and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are tested. Consequently, studies that aim to identify more suitable antigens for the detection of both VL and VL/HIV coinfection cases are needed.

Objetivo (s)

In this study, phage display technology was used to select antigens to be evaluated for the diagnosis of VL and VL/HIV coinfection.

Material e Métodos

A Ph.D. library was used to select conformational epitopes by phage display. Biopanning cycles were performed using positive selection from pools of sera from patients with VL and coinfected with VL/HIV, and phage exclusion by negative selection with pools of sera from healthy individuals and HIV. Of the selected clones by phage display, nine valid and non-repeated amino acid sequences were identified, synthesized, and tested as peptides in enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) experiments.

Resultados e Conclusão

Results showed that three peptides (Pep2, Pep3, and Pep4) exhibited excellent performance in diagnosing VL and VL/HIV coinfection, with 100% sensitivity and specificity values. The other peptides demonstrated sensitivities ranging from 50.9% to 80.0% and specificities ranging from 60.0% to 95.6%. Furthermore, Pep2, Pep3, and Pep4 exhibited a potential prognostic effect, as the specific serological reactivity significantly decreased after patient treatment. Bioinformatics assays revealed that these three conformational epitopes were predicted to be present in the Leishmania trypanothione reductase protein. In conclusion, our data suggest that Pep2, Pep3, and Pep4 could be utilized for the diagnosis of VL and VL/HIV coinfection.

Palavras-chave

Diagnosis; VL/HIV coinfection; visceral leishmaniasis; human immunodeficiency virus; phage display; trypanothione reductase.

Agradecimentos

CAPES; Fapemig; CNPq.