Publications by authors named "Ezequiel M Fuentes-Panana"

Article Synopsis
  • - The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) affects over 95% of people globally, typically causing infectious mononucleosis in children, yet it can also present with unusual and severe symptoms in a clinical setting, particularly in a pediatric hospital in Mexico.
  • - A study reviewed medical records of 26 EBV-positive patients under 18 years from 2012-2022, revealing that common symptoms included fever (85%) and lymphadenopathy (35%), with 65% experiencing severe atypical complications like pneumonia and blood disorders, leading to some fatalities.
  • - The findings highlight the importance of recognizing EBV as a possible cause of varied and serious clinical symptoms in children, stressing the need for thorough assessments and increased
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Background: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is involved in the development of lymphomas, nasopharyngeal carcinomas (NPC), and a subgroup of gastric carcinomas (GC), and has also been detected in lung carcinomas, even though the role of the virus in this malignancy has not yet been established. BamH1-A Rightward Frame 1 (BARF1), a suggested exclusive epithelial EBV oncoprotein, is detected in both EBV-associated GCs (EBVaGC) and NPC. The expression and role of BARF1 in lung cancer is unknown.

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Introduction: Lipopolysaccharide-responsive and beige-like anchor (LRBA) is a scaffolding protein that interacts with proteins such as CTLA-4 and PKA, the importance of which has been determined in various cell types, including T regulatory cells, B cells, and renal cells. LRBA deficiency is associated with an inborn error in immunity characterized by immunodeficiency and autoimmunity. In addition to defects in T regulatory cells, patients with LRBA deficiency also exhibit B cell defects, such as reduced cell number, low memory B cells, hypogammaglobulinemia, impaired B cell proliferation, and increased autophagy.

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Article Synopsis
  • * In a study measuring cytokine levels in 158 pediatric kidney and liver transplant patients, higher levels of IL-4, IL-8, and IL-10 were found to be associated with graft rejection, especially in cases with certain herpesviruses present.
  • * The research stresses the need for closer monitoring of not just EBV and HCMV, but also HHV6 and HHV7 to improve risk assessment and treatment strategies for pediatric transplant patients.
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  • Melanoma treatment has significantly advanced with checkpoint blockade immunotherapy (CBI), focusing on understanding immune cell interactions within tumors for better responses to therapy.
  • The study utilized advanced techniques to analyze two cohorts of melanoma patients—one without treatment and another receiving immunotherapy—highlighting the role of tissue-resident memory (TRM) CD8 T cells and dendritic cells in cancer immunity.
  • Findings revealed two distinct TRM CD8 T cell subsets (TCF1+ and TCF1-) that exhibit different protein expressions linked to melanoma protection, with their spatial distribution in tumors being crucial for understanding their impact on treatment outcomes.
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Zika (ZIKV) and Chikungunya (CHIKV) viruses are mosquito-transmitted infections, or vector-borne pathogens, that emerged a few years ago. Reliable diagnostic tools for ZIKV and CHIKV-inexpensive, multiplexed, rapid, highly sensitive, and specific point-of-care (POC) systems-are vital for appropriate risk management and therapy. We recently studied a detection system with great success in Mexico (Villahermosa, state of Tabasco), working with human sera from patients infected with those viruses.

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Gastric cancer is the fourth deadliest cancer worldwide. Due to the lack of specific early symptoms and noninvasive methods for early detection, the prognosis of gastric cancer patients is poor. Gastric cancer has a well-recognized infectious etiology, with and Epstein-Barr Virus being the main associated infectious agents.

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Article Synopsis
  • EBV and H. pylori are major risk factors for gastric cancer, both causing lifelong infections and being carcinogenic to humans.
  • CagA positive strains of H. pylori trigger the secretion of IL-8 in gastric cells, promoting chronic inflammation by attracting neutrophils.
  • The study found that IL-8 also acts as a strong chemoattractant for EBV-infected B lymphocytes, with CXCR2 being the key receptor influenced by EBV, suggesting a possible interaction mechanism between H. pylori and EBV in gastric tissue.
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Acral melanoma (AM) is the most common melanoma in non-Caucasian populations, yet it remains largely understudied. As AM lacks the UV-radiation mutational signatures that characterize other cutaneous melanomas, it is considered devoid of immunogenicity and is rarely included in clinical trials assessing novel immunotherapeutic regimes aiming to recover the antitumor function of immune cells. We studied a Mexican cohort of melanoma patients from the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) (n = 38) and found an overrepresentation of AM (73.

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Article Synopsis
  • Hereditary actin-related protein 2/3 complex subunit 1B deficiency leads to various health issues like recurrent infections, asthma, eczema, and bleeding, as seen in six patients from four Mexican families studied.
  • The patients exhibited a mix of symptoms, including high levels of certain immunoglobulins and platelet abnormalities, with genetic testing revealing notable variants in some and identifying similar cases in other reports.
  • The study highlights the diverse clinical manifestations of this deficiency, contributing new insights such as keloid scars and a potential genetic link between families due to a novel deletion in a specific gene region.
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EBV and Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) cause highly prevalent persistent infections as early as in childhood. Both pathogens are associated with gastric carcinogenesis.

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Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. It is classified as cutaneous and non-cutaneous, with the former characterized by developing in sun-exposed areas of the skin, UV-light radiation being its most important risk factor and ordinarily affecting fair skin populations. In recent years, the incidence of melanoma has been increasing in populations with darker complexion, for example, Hispanics, in which acral melanoma is highly prevalent.

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Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) mainly affects females at reproductive age, which has been associated with hormones, such as prolactin (PRL). Different studies suggest that PRL exacerbates the clinical manifestations of SLE both in patients and in mouse models (e.g.

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Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer. Due to its high mutation rates, melanoma is a convenient model to study antitumor immune responses. Dendritic cells (DCs) play a key role in activating cytotoxic CD8 T lymphocytes and directing them to kill tumor cells.

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Infections remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality among hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) recipients. Unlike Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) and Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV), Human Herpesvirus (HHV) 6, HHV7 and HHV8 are not routinely monitored in many centers, especially in the pediatric population of low-medium income countries. We screened EBV, HCMV, HHV6, HHV7 and HHV8 in 412 leukocytes-plasma paired samples from 40 pediatric patients assisted in a tertiary hospital in Mexico.

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β- and γ-herpesviruses persistently infect most of the world population, largely without clinical manifestations. However, in immunosuppressive settings like transplantation, these viruses are often jointly reactivated, associating with graft dysfunction/rejection, HCMV disease, and lymphoproliferation. In HIV/AIDS, direct interaction mechanisms have been described for EBV and KSHV in primary effusion lymphoma, demonstrating that the cooperation between both viruses enhances lymphomagenesis.

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The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is a well-adapted human virus, and its infection is exclusive to our species, generally beginning in the childhood and then persisting throughout the life of most of the affected adults. Although this infection generally remains asymptomatic, EBV can trigger life-threatening conditions under unclear circumstances. The EBV lifecycle is characterized by interactions with other viruses or bacteria, which increases the probability of awakening its pathobiont capacity.

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In cutaneous T cell lymphoma (CTCL), a dominant Th2 profile associated with disease progression has been proposed. Moreover, although the production and regulation of IL-4 expression during the early stages of the disease may have important implications in later stages, these processes are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate the presence of TOX CD4 T cells that produce IL-4 in early-stage skin lesions of CTCL patients and reveal a complex mechanism by which the NLRP3 receptor promotes a Th2 response by controlling IL-4 production.

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We previously reported that triple-negative breast cancer (BRCA) cells overexpress the cytokines GM-CSF, G-CSF, MCP-1, and RANTES, and when monocytes were 3-D co-cultured with them, M1-like macrophages were generated with the ability to induce aggressive features in luminal BRCA cell lines. These include upregulation of mesenchymal and stemness markers and invasion. In this study, we stimulated peripheral blood monocytes with the four cytokines and confirmed their capacity to generate protumoral M1-like macrophages.

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Systemic lupus erythematosus is characterized by high levels of IgG class autoantibodies that contribute to the pathophysiology of the disease. The formation of these autoantibodies occurs in the germinal centers, where there is cooperation between follicular T helper cells (T) and autoreactive B cells. Prolactin has been reported to exacerbate the clinical manifestations of lupus by increasing autoantibody concentrations.

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Self-reactive immature B cells are eliminated through apoptosis by tolerance mechanisms, failing to eliminate these cells results in autoimmune diseases. Prolactin is known to rescue immature B cells from B cell receptor engagement-induced apoptosis in lupus-prone mice. The objective of this study was to characterize in vitro prolactin signaling in immature B cells, using sorting, PCR array, RT-PCR, flow cytometry, and chromatin immunoprecipitation.

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Breast cancer (BRCA) is the most frequent cancer type that afflicts women. Unfortunately, despite all the current therapeutic strategies, many patients develop chemoresistance hampering the efficacy of treatment. Hence, an early indicator of therapy efficacy might aid in the search for better treatment and patient survival.

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Immunotherapy has improved the clinical response in melanoma patients, although a relevant percentage of patients still cannot be salvaged. The search for the immune populations that provide the best tumor control and that can be coaxed by immunotherapy strategies is a hot topic in cancer research nowadays. Tumor-infiltrating TCF-1 progenitor exhausted CD8 T cells seem to grant the best melanoma prognosis and also efficiently respond to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy, giving rise to a TIM-3 terminally exhausted population with heightened effector activity.

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Breast cancer (BRCA) is a leading cause of mortality among women. Tumors often acquire aggressive features through genomic aberrations affecting cellular programs, e.g.

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The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) and human T-lymphotropic virus (HTLV-1) are lymphomagenic viruses with region-specific induced morbidity. The RIAL-CYTED aims to increase the knowledge of lymphoma in Latin America (LA), and, as such, we systematically analyzed the literature to better understand our risk for virus-induced lymphoma. We observed that high endemicity regions for certain lymphomas, e.

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