Variable gene expression and parasite load predict treatment outcome in cutaneous leishmaniasis.

ABSTRACT: Patients infected with Leishmania braziliensis develop chronic lesions that often fail to respond to treatment with antiparasite drugs. To determine whether genes whose expression is highly variable in lesions between patients might influence disease outcome, we obtained biopsies of lesions from patients before treatment with pentavalent antimony and performed transcriptomic profiling on these clinical samples. We identified genes that were highly variably expressed between patients, and the variable expression of these genes correlated with treatment outcome. Among the most variable genes in all the patients were components of the cytolytic pathway, and the expression of these genes correlated with parasite load in the skin. We demonstrated that treatment failure was linked to the

SUBMITTER: Amorim CF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7068779 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature