Immunoglobulin Y for Potential Diagnostic and Therapeutic Applications in Infectious Diseases

Antiviral, antibacterial, and antiparasitic drugs and vaccines are essential to maintaining the health of humans and animals. Yet, their production can be slow and expensive, and efficacy lost once pathogens mount resistance. Chicken immunoglobulin Y (IgY) is a highly conserved homolog of human immunoglobulin G (IgG) that has shown benefits and a favorable safety profile, primarily in animal models of human infectious diseases. IgY is fast-acting, easy to produce, and low cost. IgY antibodies can readily be generated in large quantities with minimal environmental harm or infrastructure investment by using egg-laying hens. We summarize a variety of IgY uses, focusing on their potential for the detection, prevention, and treatment of human and animal infections.

An assessment of potential biomarkers of environment enteropathy and its association with age and microbial infections among children in Bangladesh

Interventional studies targeting environment enteropathy (EE) are impeded by the lack of appropriate, validated, non-invasive biomarkers of EE. Thus, we aimed to validate the association of potential biomarkers for EE with enteric infections and nutritional status in a longitudinal birth cohort study. We measured endotoxin core antibody (EndoCab) and soluble CD14 (sCD14) in serum, and myeloperoxidase (MPO) in feces using commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits. We found that levels of serum EndoCab and sCD14 increase with the cumulative incidence of enteric infections. We observed a significant correlation between the fecal MPO level in the children at 24 months of age with the total number of bacterial and viral infections, the total number of parasitic infections, and the total number of diarrheal episodes and diarrheal duration. We observed that the levels of serum EndoCab, sCD14, and fecal MPO at 3 months of age were significantly associated with whether children were malnourished at 18 months of age or not. Biomarkers such as fecal MPO, serum EndoCab and sCD14 in children at an early age may be useful as a measure of cumulative burden of preceding enteric infections, which are predictive of subsequent malnutrition status and may be useful non-invasive biomarkers for EE.

[Approaches to developing a procedure for mapping water basin regions, by using the parasitological criteria]

The structure of a parasite system is formed and its functioning takes place in qualitatively different environments. The aquatic environment serves as a source of new elements and modules, energy, and information for parasite systems. And the parasite systems, for their part, affect the physical and biological parameters of the environment. Many intestinal infections caused by pathogenic microorganisms generally characterized by an acute disease course are related to a water factor. Such are typhus, typhoids, dysentery, cholera, salmonellosis, virus hepatitis, and others. Many parasitic diseases caused by pathogenic intestinal protistae (lambliasis, amebiasis, balantidiasis), blood parasite protistae (malaria), helminthes (opisthorchiasis, fascioliasis, diphyllobothriasis, cercariosis, pseudoamphistomosis) are also closely related to a water factor. Ascaridiasis, hymenolepiasis, trichocephalosis, and echinococcosis have a less close but still self-evident relationship to a water factor. The clbse relationships of many parasitic diseases to a water factor are also determined by the fact that the life cycles of many parasites necessarily include various intermediate hosts and parasite vectors, such as fishes, mollusks, crustaceans, and insects, which are aquatic organisms at some stages of their life. The results of continuous exposure of people to parasitic diseases are quite similar to the suppressive effects of the environment in the ecologically troublesome regions. The most prognostically useful information is formed while mapping by medical and ecological regions, by employing a combination of current mathematical and cartographical methods. The former include cluster analysis, quartering method, informational logical analysis, which are all described in this article and others. Regional mapping using the parasitological criteria should achieve at least two goals: 1) a scientific one that aids in finding causative connections and to prognosticate a situation; 2) a practical one that assists in developing regional programs for disease control and prevention. It is necessary to use the recommendations described in detail in the article in order to have the maximum results during medical and ecological mapping by the regions with a future goal of obtaining useful prognostic information.

Adult T-cell leukaemia/lymphoma-like human T-cell leukaemia virus-1 replication in infective dermatitis

Adult T-cell leukaemia/lymphoma (ATLL) is a malignant T-cell proliferation that occurs in 3-5% of individuals infected with human T-cell leukaemia virus-1 (HTLV-1). HTLV-1 infection is also linked to the development of infective dermatitis (ID), an exudative dermatitis of children that has been proposed as a cofactor of ATLL. Here, HTLV-1 replication was investigated over time in a girl with ID and multiparasitic infestation including strongyloidiasis, a disease also known to predispose HTLV-1 carriers to ATLL. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) revealed extremely high proviral loads. During the 2-year period of the present study, the proportion of circulating infected cells ranged between 12% and 36%. Quadruplicate linker-mediated PCR amplification of HTLV-1 flanking sequences identified a pattern of extensive and persistent oligoclonal expansion of infected lymphocytes. As viral loads, both the number and the degree of infected T-cell expansion were independent of treatment or clinical signs. However, the temporal fluctuation of proviral loads correlated significantly with the degree of infected T-cell expansion, but not with the overall number of detected clones. This pattern of HTLV-1 replication over time is very different from that observed in asymptomatic carriers and reminiscent of that observed in ATLL, a result consistent with the proposal of ID as an ATLL cofactor.