Endogenous Interleukin-18 Improves the Early Antimicrobial Host Response in Severe Melioidosis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Melioidosis is caused by the soil saprophyte Burkholderia pseudomallei and is endemic in Southeast Asia. The pathogenesis of melioidosis is still largely unknown, although gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) seems to play an obligatory role in host defense. Previously, we have shown that IFN-gamma production in melioidosis is controlled in part by interleukin-18 (IL-18). The aim of the present study was to determine the role of IL-18 in the immune response to B. pseudomallei. For this the following investigations were performed. (i) Plasma IL-18 and blood monocyte IL-18 mRNA levels were elevated in 34 patients with culture-proven melioidosis compared to the levels in 32 local healthy controls; in addition, IL-18 binding protein levels were markedly elevated in patients, strongly correlating with mortality. (ii) IL-18 gene-deficient (IL-18 knockout [KO]) mice showed accelerated mortality after intranasal infection with a lethal dose of B. pseudomallei, which was accompanied by enhanced bacterial growth in their lungs, livers, spleens, kidneys, and blood at 24 and 48 h postinfection, compared to wild-type mice. In addition, IL-18 KO mice displayed evidence of enhanced hepatocellular injury and renal insufficiency. Together, these data indicate that the enhanced production of IL-18 in melioidosis is an essential part of a protective immune response to this severe infection.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".