Soluble E-cadherin: A marker of genital epithelial disruption
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The genital epithelial barrier is a crucial first line of defence against HIV, and epithelial disruption may enhance HIV susceptibility. Assessment of genital epithelial integrity require biopsies, but their collection is not practical in many research settings. A validated biomarker of genital epithelial barrier integrity would therefore be useful. E-cadherin, an adhesion component of the cell-cell junction in epithelial tissues, may be released as soluble E-cadherin (sE-cad) upon epithelial trauma, and so we evaluated sE-cad as a marker of genital epithelial disruption. First, using an in vitro monolayer of immortalised endocervical epithelial cells, we demonstrate that sE-cad, IL-1β, and IL-1α levels are immediately increased after physical disruption, followed by a delayed increase in IL-6 levels compared to undisrupted controls. In vivo studies confirmed that sE-cad levels in cervicovaginal secretions were significantly elevated 6 hours after endocervical cytobrush sampling. Furthermore, the level of sE-cad in coronal sulcus swabs from Ugandan men was inversely correlated with the amount of membrane-bound E-cadherin within the overlying foreskin tissues. Our results validate the use of soluble E-cadherin as a marker of epithelial disruption and demonstrate that the processes of physical disruption and inflammation in the genital tract are strongly intertwined.
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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 | 0.001 | 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) | 0.003 | 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".