Progesterone Increases Susceptibility and Decreases Immune Responses to Genital Herpes Infection
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Depo-provera, a long-acting progestational formulation, is widely used to facilitate infection of sexually transmitted diseases in animal models. We have previously reported that hormone treatments change susceptibility and immune responses to genital tract infections. In this study we compared the changes in susceptibility of mice to genital herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) after Depo-provera or a saline suspension of progesterone (P-sal). We found that following Depo-provera-treatment, mice had prolonged diestrus that lasted more than 4 weeks. This coincided with a 100-fold increase in susceptibility to genital HSV-2 compared to that of untreated mice. Mice given P-sal were in diestrous stage for 4 to 6 days before returning to irregular reproductive cycles. When these mice were infected at diestrus they showed a 10-fold increase in susceptibility compared to that of normal, untreated mice. P-sal-treated mice infected at estrus were susceptible to HSV-2, depending on the infectious dose. Normal, untreated mice in estrus were not susceptible to HSV-2, even at a high infectious dose of 10(7) PFU. In addition to alterations in susceptibility, Depo-provera treatment had inhibitory effects on immune responses to HSV-2. Mice immunized with HSV-2 protein (gB) and treated with Depo-provera showed significant lowering of local HSV-2-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgA in their vaginal washes. Mice immunized with an attenuated strain of HSV-2 2 weeks after Depo-provera treatment failed to develop protection when challenged intravaginally with wild-type HSV-2. In contrast, mice given progesterone and immunized at diestrus or estrus were completely protected from intravaginal challenge. These studies show that Depo-provera treatment changes susceptibility and local immune responses to genital HSV-2 infection. Animal models and vaccine strategies for sexually transmitted diseases need to consider the effect of hormone treatments on susceptibility and immune responses.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| 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 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 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".