Epidemiological and genomic investigation of chikungunya virus in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, between 2015 and 2018.

Since 2014, Brazil has experienced an unprecedented epidemic caused by chikungunya virus (CHIKV), with several waves of East-Central-South-African (ECSA) lineage transmission reported across the country. In 2018, Rio de Janeiro state, the third most populous state in Brazil, reported 41% of all chikungunya cases in the country. Here we use evolutionary and epidemiological analysis to estimate the timescale of CHIKV-ECSA-American lineage and its epidemiological patterns in Rio de Janeiro.

Chikungunya fever: How accurate is the clinical-epidemiological diagnosis compared to the gold standard of molecular and serological laboratory diagnosis?

Objective: To evaluate the accuracy of the current World Health Organization' (WHO) Chikungunya fever (CHIKF) clinical-epidemiological case definition against the gold standard of laboratory diagnosis.

Methods: This was a prospective study of patients seeking medical care at an Emergency Department in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from January to June 2018. Clinical features were recorded.

Reduction of inflammation and T cell activation after 6 months of cART initiation during acute, but not in early chronic HIV-1 infection.

Objectives: To investigate the impact of early combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) on inflammation biomarkers and immune activation during acute and early chronic HIV-1 infection.

Methods: We included 12 acute (AHI), 11 early chronic (EcHI), and 18 late chronic HIV-1-infected (LcHI) individuals who were treated with cART and 18 HIV-1-uninfected (HIV-neg) individuals. Plasmatic levels of inflammation biomarkers, CD8CD38HLA-DR T cell frequencies, CD4 T cell counts, CD4/CD8 ratio, total HIV-1 DNA and plasmatic viral load were evaluated.