Controversial role of leishmania RNA virus as a determinant of pathogenicity in human leishmaniasis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: American tegumentary leishmaniasis (ATL) is a neglected disease of South America where metastatic mucosal lesions (ML) can be seen in up to 5-20% of Leishmania Viannia complex infections. The Leishmania RNA virus-1 (LRV1) has been recently implicated as a possible pathogenic agent in ATL since disseminated disease (DisL) was induced by high LRV1-expressing amastigotes in an animal model, and human cases of DisL have been reportedly infected with LRV1-containing Leishmania parasites. None of these studies clearly supported its role in human disease. Methods & Materials: Fifty-six subjects with parasitologically confirmed ATL were clinically and parasitologically assessed. Lesion biopsy specimens were processed for detection and quantification of Leishmania (Viannia) DNA by a quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) assay targeting kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) minicircles. Leishmania (Viannia) species were identified by PCR targeting the mpi gene and PCR-RFLP assays targeting cpb and hsp70 genes. LRV1 RNA detection was performed using reverse transcription (RT)-qPCR targeting conserved viral sequences. Results: Subjects were clinically classified as follows: a) Localized cutaneous leishmaniasis (LCL, 42.9%), b) ML (n = 28, 50%), and c) DisL (n = 4, 7.1%). Strain identification by clinical category was: a) LCL: L. (V.) braziliensis (56%) and L. (V.) guyanensis (31.3%), b) ML: L. (V.) braziliensis (60%) and L. (V.) peruviana (40%), and c) DisL: L. (V.) guyanensis. Rate of LRV1 detection was 7.1% in ML (2/28), 8.3% in LCL (2/24) and 50% in DisL (2/4). Considering DisL and ML as metastatic disease (MD) and LCL as non-metastatic disease (nMD), the rate of LRV1 detection was 8.3% in nMD and 12,5% in MD (p = 1.0). Even though detection of LRV1 was higher in DisL, an important co-morbidity was detected in those patients: HIV infection, subclinical TB infection, and disseminated mycobacterial disease. Parasite load in MD and nMD was comparable (37.8 vs. 86.4 parasites per 106 human cells, p = 0.52). There were no clinical or parasitological differences between parasite infected and non-infected by LRV1. Conclusion: Our findings do not resemble those reported in animal models. LRV1 may be a conditional contributor to metastatic spread of ATL, but we were unable to extrapolate findings from animal models to human disease.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".