Publications by authors named "Elisa Roncal"

Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is one of the 10 leading killer diseases in the world. At least one-quarter of the population has been infected, and there are 1.3 million deaths annually.

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Tuberculosis phenotypic detection assays are commonly used in low-resource countries. Therefore, reliable detection methods are crucial for early diagnosis and treatment. The microscopic observation drug susceptibility (MODS) assay is a culture-based test to detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis and characterize drug resistance in 7-10 days directly from sputum.

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Pyrazinamide (PZA) susceptibility testing in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) is a current area of development and PZA-resistant strains are increasingly prevalent. Previous studies have demonstrated that the detection of pyrazinoic acid (POA), the metabolite produced by the deamidation of PZA, is a good predictor for PZA resistance since a resistant strain would not convert PZA into POA at a critical required rate, whereas a susceptible strain will do, expelling POA to the extracellular environment at a certain rate, and allowing for quantification of this accumulated analyte. In order to quantify POA, an indirect competitive ELISA (icELISA) test using hyperimmune polyclonal rabbit serum against POA was developed: for this purpose, pure POA was first covalently linked to the highly immunogenic Keyhole Limpet Hemocyanine, and inoculated in rabbits.

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The gut microbiota of insects is composed of a wide range of microorganisms which produce bioactive compounds that protect their host from pathogenic attack. In the present study, we isolate and identify the fungus Chrysosporium multifidum from the gut of Hermetia illucens larvae. Extract from C.

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Cysticercosis is a worldwide parasitic disease of humans and pigs principally caused by infection with the larvae of the pork tapeworm Taenia solium. Through the use of the recently-made-available T. solium genome, we identified a gene within a novel 1448 bp ORF that theoretically encodes for a 433 amino acid-long protein and predicted to be an α-enolase closely related to enolases of other flatworms.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the genetic variability of the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium, using microsatellite markers to analyze cysts from infected pigs and humans.
  • Initial experiments showed that specific tapeworm genotypes were linked to the cysts in pigs, indicating that these markers could help trace transmission patterns.
  • Further analysis of naturally infected pigs and human carriers revealed genetic diversity in T. solium, suggesting that multiple tapeworm variants can infect a single host, which may complicate tracking infections geographically.
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Article Synopsis
  • Tuberculosis (TB) is a significant global health issue, with drug resistance, especially to Pyrazinamide (PZA), complicating treatment efforts.
  • Researchers analyzed 68 M. tuberculosis strains from TB patients in Peru, identifying no clear genetic clustering but discovering mutations in the pncA gene and other novel genes linked to PZA resistance.
  • These findings indicate that PZA resistance may involve multiple mechanisms, suggesting that the drug targets several biological pathways instead of just one.
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