Virus-like Particle Display of the α-Gal Epitope for the Diagnostic Assessment of Chagas Disease

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• 作者：Carlos Ramon Nascimento Brito ; Craig S. McKay ; Maíra Araújo Azevedo ; Luíza Costa Brandão Santos ; Ana Paula Venuto ; Daniela Ferreira Nunes ; Daniella Alchaar D’Ávila ; Gisele Macedo Rodrigues da Cunha ; Igor Correia Almeida ; Ricardo Tostes Gazzinelli ; Lucia Maria Cunha Galvão ; Egler Chiari ; Carlos A. Sanhueza ; M. G. Finn ; Alexandre Ferreira Marques
• 刊名：ACS Infectious Diseases
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：December 9, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：2
• 期：12
• 页码：917-922
• 全文大小：412K
• ISSN：2373-8227

文摘

The α-Gal antigen [Galα(1,3)Galβ(1,4)GlcNAcα] is an immunodominant epitope displayed by infective trypomastigote forms of Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease. A virus-like particle displaying a high density of α-Gal was found to be a superior reagent for the ELISA-based serological diagnosis of Chagas disease and the assessment of treatment effectiveness. A panel of sera from patients chronically infected with T. cruzi, both untreated and benznidazole-treated, was compared with sera from patients with leishmaniasis and from healthy donors. The nanoparticle-α-Gal construct allowed for perfect discrimination between Chagas patients and the others, avoiding false negative and false positive results obtained with current state-of-the-art reagents. As previously reported with purified α-Gal-containing glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored mucins, the current study also showed concentrations of anti-α-Gal IgG to decrease substantially in patients receiving treatment with benznidazole, suggesting that the semiquantitative assessment of serum levels of this highly abundant type of antibody can report on disease status in individual patients.