An apparently paradoxical role for IFN-g in human Chagas' disease was observed when studying the pattern of cytokine production by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) obtained from two groups of chagasic patients after specific stimulation with Trypanosoma cruzi-derived antigens. The groups studied were 1) patients treated with benznidazole during the acute phase of Trypanosoma cruzi infection and 2) chronically infected untreated patients. In the treated group, higher levels of IFN-g were produced by PBMC from individuals cured after treatment when compared to non-cured patients. In contrast, in the chronically infected group (not treated) higher levels of IFN-g were produced by PBMC from cardiac patients in comparison with asymptomatic (indeterminate) patients. This apparently paradoxical role for IFN-g in human Chagas' disease is discussed in terms of the possibility of a temporal difference in IFN-g production during the initial stages of the infection (acute phase) in the presence or absence of chemotherapy. The maintenance of an immune response with high levels of IFN-g production during the chronic phase of the infection may favor cure or influence the development of the cardiac form of the diseas
The cosmological information extracted from photometric surveys is most robust when multiple probes of the large scale structure of the universe are used. Two of the most sensitive probes are the clustering of galaxies and the tangential shear of background galaxy shapes produced by those foreground galaxies, so-called galaxy-galaxy lensing. Combining the measurements of these two two-point functions leads to cosmological constraints that are independent of the way galaxies trace matter (the galaxy bias factor). The optimal choice of foreground, or lens, galaxies is governed by the joint, but conflicting requirements to obtain accurate redshift information and large statistics. We present cosmological results from the full 5000 deg 2 of the Dark Energy Survey first three years of observations (Y3) combining those two-point functions, using for the first time a magnitude-limited lens sample (MAGLIM) of 11 million galaxies especially selected to optimize such combination, and 100 million background shapes. We consider two cosmological models, flat ΛCDM and wCDM, and marginalized over 25 astrophysical and systematic nuisance parameters. In ΛCDM we obtain for the matter density Ωm = 0.320 +0.041 −0.034 and for the clustering amplitude S8 ≡ σ8(Ωm/0.3) 0.5 = 0.778 +0.037 −0.031 , at 68% C.L. The latter is only 1σ smaller than the prediction in this model informed by measurements of the cosmic microwave background by the Planck satellite.In wCDM we find Ωm = 0.32 +0.044 −0.046 , S8 = 0.777 +0.049 −0.051 , and dark energy equation of state w = −1.031 +0.218 −0.379 . We find that including smaller scales while marginalizing over non-linear galaxy bias improves the constraining power in the Ωm − S8 plane by 31% and in the Ωm − w plane by 41% while yielding consistent cosmological parameters from those in the linear bias case. These results are combined with those from cosmic shear in a companion paper to present full DES-Y3 constraints from the three two-point functions (3 × 2pt).
Anti-gal antibodies directed against a carbohydrate epitope present in mouse laminin (galactosyl alpha 1-3 galactose) and detected in high levels in sera from patients in the acute phase of Chagas disease are responsible for the direct lysis (DL) of Trypanosoma cruzi blood forms independent of either the classic or alternative complement pathways. Furthermore, the lectins Euonymus europaeus (EE) specific for the carbohydrates gal alpha 1-3 gal present a similar lytic activity against T. cruzi at the same concentrations of purified anti-gal antibodies. The DL activity was tested with several other lectins but Concanavalin A (Con A) specific for alpha-D-mannose and alpha-D-glucose was the only one also presenting lytic activity. The lectins and anti-gal antibodies lytic activity can be inhibited by specific carbohydrates suggesting that this phenomenon is related to the capability of these lectins or anti-gal antibodies to bind to a crucial surface component of T. cruzi. Moreover, the infectivity of T. cruzi blood forms to mice was clearly inactivated by incubation with acute chagasic sera (ACS) but not by ACS absorbed by immunoaffinity chromatography with mouse laminin, a strong evidence that high levels of anti-gal antibodies participate in the decline of the parasitaemia from the acute to the chronic phase in Chagas disease.
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