This study was performed to evaluate commercial brucella immunoglobulin G and M enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (IgG and IgM ELISA) kits for the diagnosis of human brucellosis and to suggest a candidate prognostic marker for human brucellosis. We determined the serum levels of brucella IgG, IgM, C-reactive protein (CRP), soluble CD14 (sCD14), and neopterin in patients with brucellosis and com...

Microbial translocation is now viewed as a central event in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammation during HIV infection. Thymic function failure is another crucial factor involved in HIV disease progression. The goal of this study was to explore the hypothesis of potential links between microbial translocation and thymic function in HIV-1 patients living in Belgium. The extent of microbial tr...

PURPOSE Genetic variation in CD14 may affect CD14 expression and susceptibility to Helicobacter pylori infection-related cancers. This study examined functional single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in the CD14 promoter and their associations with risk of developing gastric carcinoma in relation to H. pylori infection. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Thirty individual DNAs were sequenced to identify vari...

Low-grade inflammation observed in obesity is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Recent studies revealed that this would be linked to gut-derived endotoxemia during fat digestion in high-fat diets, but nothing is known about the effect of lipid composition. The study was designed to test the impact of oil composition of high-fat diets on endotoxin metabolism and inflammation in mice. C57...

BACKGROUND Circulating levels of microbial products are increased in HIV infection, and provoke endothelial dysfunction in other disease settings. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We examined data from a cross-sectional single site study at Indiana University (Indiana, N = 85) and a 24- week multicenter prospective study of antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation (ACTG 5152s, N = 75). Brachial ...

BACKGROUND Biomarkers to differentiate between active tuberculosis (TB) and latent TB infection (LTBI) and to monitor treatment responses are requested to complement TB diagnostics and control, particularly in patients with multi-drug resistant TB. We have studied soluble markers of the Toll-like-receptor 4 (TLR-4) pathway in various stages of TB disease and during anti-TB treatment. METHODS ...

BACKGROUND We evaluated whether immune activation (IA) and microbial translocation (MT) might play a role in accelerating liver disease progression in HIV-HBV/HCV co-infected patients. METHODS ART-naïve HIV/viral hepatitis co-infected patients from Icona with a CD4 cell count >200/μl and with a known date of prior HIV neg/pos tests and ≥1 plasma sample stored were included in the study. Plasm...

BACKGROUND Antiretroviral therapy (ART)-controlled HIV-infected patients have elevated levels of systemic inflammatory markers, C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin (IL)-6, which correlate with increased cardiovascular risk and/or mortality. Persistent low-level viral replication could be involved in this inflammatory state. We evaluated whether residual viral load (VL) correlated with the ...

The objective of the current study was to evaluate the dynamics of infection and the immunological response to varying numbers of Escherichia coli injected into the mammary glands of primiparous cows during the periparturient period. Primiparous cows have been shown to be more resistant to intramammary E. coli challenge, and an increase of the inoculum dose by 2 log10 units induced a more rapid...

OBJECTIVE Synovial inflammation, a feature of both osteoarthritis (OA) and meniscal injury, is hypothesized to be triggered in part via stimulation of Toll-like receptors (TLRs). We undertook this study to test whether a TLR-2- or TLR-4-stimulating factor in synovial fluid (SF) from patients with early knee OA with meniscal injury could lead to inflammatory activation of synoviocytes. METHODS...