Pneumococcal vaccination in developing countries.
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Africa↗
Biomedical subjects
Samba Sow
Publications and source records attributed to Samba Sow.
Towards an immunodiagnostic test for leprosy.
In addition to multidrug therapy, elimination of leprosy requires improved diagnostic methods. Using a comparative genomics approach, 17 potential protein antigens (MLP) that are restricted to Mycobacterium leprae, or of limited distribution, were produced and tested for antigen-specific immune responses on leprosy patients, healthy contacts of leprosy patients, and tuberculosis patients in Mali and Bangladesh, as well as on non-endemic controls. T-cell antigenicity of MLP was confirmed by IFN-gamma production in whole-blood assays with the highest responses observed in paucibacillary leprosy patients and healthy contacts. Four MLP behaved well in both countries and induced significantly different responses between the study groups. Peptides carrying T cell epitopes from one of the antigens gave promising results in restimulation assays in mice and immune responses were not influenced by prior exposure to BCG or environmental mycobacteria. This study provides the immunological framework for the development of a specific, peptide-based immunodiagnostic test for leprosy.
Amino Acid Sequence↗
On the origin of leprosy.
Leprosy, a chronic human disease with potentially debilitating neurological consequences, results from infection with Mycobacterium leprae. This unculturable pathogen has undergone extensive reductive evolution, with half of its genome now occupied by pseudogenes. Using comparative genomics, we demonstrated that all extant cases of leprosy are attributable to a single clone whose dissemination worldwide can be retraced from analysis of very rare single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The disease seems to have originated in Eastern Africa or the Near East and spread with successive human migrations. Europeans or North Africans introduced leprosy into West Africa and the Americas within the past 500 years.
Africa↗