Monkeypox: What the Dermatologist Needs to Know.

Monkeypox, an endemic disease in some African countries, has provoked public health activeness on a global scale that even the World Health Organization (WHO), invoking international health regulations, declared it a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). The WHO called attention of member states to exert maximum surveillance over the disease, its patients, and contact persons in order to standardize control measures. A need was directed to provide complete knowledge about the disease, allowing the administration of prior diagnoses as well as isolation and more effective epidemiologic control measures.

Prediction of the occurrence of leprosy reactions based on Bayesian networks.

Introduction: Leprosy reactions (LR) are severe episodes of intense activation of the host inflammatory response of uncertain etiology, today the leading cause of permanent nerve damage in leprosy patients. Several genetic and non-genetic risk factors for LR have been described; however, there are limited attempts to combine this information to estimate the risk of a leprosy patient developing LR. Here we present an artificial intelligence (AI)-based system that can assess LR risk using clinical, demographic, and genetic data.

Antigen-specific secretion of IFNγ and CXCL10 in whole blood assay detects Mycobacterium leprae infection but does not discriminate asymptomatic infection from symptomatic leprosy.

To advance toward a whole blood assay (WBA)-based test capable of facilitating the diagnosis of paucibacillary (PB) leprosy, we evaluated a prototype in-tube WBA using combinations of Mycobacterium leprae antigens. Blood was collected from newly diagnosed untreated PB (n=38), multibacillary (MB) (n=30), healthy household contacts (HHC) of MB (n=27), and endemic controls (n=61) residing in Goiânia and Fortaleza, Brazil. Blood was incubated with M.

Application of Mycobacterium Leprae-specific cellular and serological tests for the differential diagnosis of leprosy from confounding dermatoses.

Mycobacterium leprae-specific serological and cell-mediated-immunity/CMI test were evaluated for the differential diagnosis of multibacillary/MB, and paucibacillary/PB leprosy from other dermatoses. Whole-blood assay/WBA/IFNγ stimulated with LID-1 antigen and ELISA tests for IgG to LID-1 and IgM to PGL-I were performed. WBA/LID-1/IFNγ production was observed in 72% PB, 11% MB leprosy, 38% dermatoses, 40% healthy endemic controls/EC.

Description of leprosy classification at baseline among patients enrolled at the uniform multidrug therapy clinical trial for leprosy patients in Brazil.

The uniform multidrug therapy clinical trial, Brazil (U-MDT/CT-BR), database was used to describe and report the performance of available tools to classify 830 leprosy patients as paucibacillary (PB) and multibacillary (MB) at baseline. In a modified Ridley and Jopling (R&J) classification, considering clinical features, histopathological results of skin biopsies and the slit-skin smear bacterial load results were used as the gold standard method for classification. Anti-phenolic glycolipid-I (PGL-I) serology by ML Flow test, the slit skin smear bacterial load, and the number of skin lesions were evaluated.

Increased frequency of CD4 and CD8 regulatory T cells in individuals under 15 years with multibacillary leprosy.

Background: Leprosy is a chronic disease, caused by Mycobacterium leprae, which poses a serious public health problem worldwide. Its high incidence in people under 15 years old in Ceará state, Brazil, reflects the difficulty of its control. The spectrum of clinical manifestations is associated with the immune response developed, with the Th1 and Th2 responses being related to the paucibacillary and multibacillary forms, respectively.