Species Specificity Preliminary Evaluation of an IL-4-based Test for the Differential Diagnosis of Human Echinococcosis

Overview

Journal Parasite Immunol

Publisher Wiley

Specialty Parasitology

Date 2019 Dec 30

PMID 31884696

Citations 5

Authors

Linda Petrone

Werner C Albrich

Francesca Tamarozzi

Manuel Frischknecht

Maria Angeles Gomez-Morales

Antonella Teggi

Matthias Hoffmann

Delia Goletti

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The diagnosis of cystic echinococcosis (CE) is based on imaging, while serology is a complementary test of particular use when imaging is inconclusive. Serology has several limitations. Among them, false-positive results are often obtained in subjects with alveolar echinococcosis (AE), rendering difficult the differential diagnosis. We set up an immune assay based on IL-4-specific production after stimulating whole blood with an antigen B (AgB)-enriched fraction from E granulosus that associates with CE and CE cysts in active stage. We aimed to evaluate potential cross-reactivity of this test using samples from patients with AE. Twelve patients with AE were recruited; IL-4 levels ranged from 0 to 0.07 pg/mL. Based on the previously identified cut-off of 0.39 pg/mL using samples from patients with CE, none of samples from AE patients scored positive. In contrast, almost 80% of samples from AE patients scored positive in serology tests based on different E granulosus-derived antigenic preparations. Our preliminary data show that this experimental whole-blood assay has no cross-reactivity in our cohort of patients with AE, in turn indicating a high specificity of the assay for CE diagnosis. This result supports further work towards the development of improved diagnostic tests for CE.

Citing Articles

Evaluation of the Local and Peripheral Immune Responses in Patients with Cystic Echinococcosis.

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A review of hypersensitivity methods to detect immune responses to SARS-CoV-2.

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Antigen discovery by bioinformatics analysis and peptide microarray for the diagnosis of cystic echinococcosis.

Batisti Biffignandi G, Vola A, Sassera D, Najafi-Fard S, Gomez Morales M, Brunetti E PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2023; 17(4):e0011210.

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Accuracy of an experimental whole-blood test for detecting reactivation of echinococcal cysts.

Petrone L, Tamarozzi F, Vola A, Gomez Morales M, Ludovisi A, Fard S PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2021; 15(8):e0009648.

PMID: 34415898 PMC: 8378729. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0009648.

Species specificity preliminary evaluation of an IL-4-based test for the differential diagnosis of human echinococcosis.

Petrone L, Albrich W, Tamarozzi F, Frischknecht M, Gomez-Morales M, Teggi A Parasite Immunol. 2019; 42(3):e12695.

PMID: 31884696 PMC: 7154717. DOI: 10.1111/pim.12695.

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