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Virulence 2018Viral infections of the respiratory tract can be complicated by bacterial superinfection, resulting in a significantly longer duration of illness and even a fatal... (Review)
Review
Viral infections of the respiratory tract can be complicated by bacterial superinfection, resulting in a significantly longer duration of illness and even a fatal outcome. In this review, we focused on interactions between S. aureus and non-influenza viruses. Clinical data evidenced that rhinovirus infection may increase the S. aureus carriage load in humans and its spread. In children, respiratory syncytial virus infection is associated with S. aureus carriage. The mechanisms by which some non-influenza respiratory viruses predispose host cells to S. aureus superinfection can be summarized in three categories: i) modifying expression levels of cellular patterns involved in S. aureus adhesion and/or internalization, ii) inducing S. aureus invasion of epithelial cells due to the disruption of tight junctions, and iii) decreasing S. aureus clearance by altering the immune response. The comprehension of pathways involved in S. aureus-respiratory virus interactions may help developing new strategies of preventive and curative therapy.
Topics: Animals; Bacterial Adhesion; Carrier State; Disease Models, Animal; Epithelial Cells; Host-Pathogen Interactions; Humans; Mice; Microbial Interactions; Nose; Picornaviridae Infections; Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infections; Respiratory System; Respiratory Tract Infections; Rhinovirus; Staphylococcal Infections; Staphylococcus aureus; Superinfection; Virus Diseases
PubMed: 30058450
DOI: 10.1080/21505594.2018.1504561 -
Frontiers of Medicine Dec 2017Superinfection is frequently detected among individuals infected by human immunodeficiency virus type I (HIV-1). Superinfection occurs at similar frequencies at acute... (Review)
Review
Superinfection is frequently detected among individuals infected by human immunodeficiency virus type I (HIV-1). Superinfection occurs at similar frequencies at acute and chronic infection stages but less frequently than primary infection. This observation indicates that the immune responses elicited by natural HIV-1 infection may play a role in curb of superinfection; however, these responses are not sufficiently strong to completely prevent superinfection. Thus, a successful HIV-1 vaccine likely needs to induce more potent and broader immune responses than those elicited by primary infection. On the other hand, potent and broad neutralization responses are more often detected after superinfection than during monoinfection. This suggests that broadly neutralizing antibodies are more likely induced by sequential immunization of multiple different immunogens than with only one form of envelope glycoprotein immunogens. Understanding why the protection from superinfection by immunity induced by primary infection is insufficient and if superinfection can lead to cross-reactive immune responses will be highly informative for HIV-1 vaccine design.
Topics: Antibodies, Neutralizing; HIV Infections; HIV-1; Humans; Immunity, Humoral; Superinfection
PubMed: 29170914
DOI: 10.1007/s11684-017-0594-8 -
Frontiers in Immunology 2018Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of disability and death world-wide, where chronic inflammation accelerates lung function decline.... (Review)
Review
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of disability and death world-wide, where chronic inflammation accelerates lung function decline. Pathological inflammation is worsened by chronic bacterial lung infections and susceptibility to recurrent acute exacerbations of COPD (AECOPD), typically caused by viral and/or bacterial respiratory pathogens. Despite ongoing efforts to reduce AECOPD rates with inhaled corticosteroids, COPD patients remain at heightened risk of developing serious lung infections/AECOPD, frequently leading to hospitalization and infection-dependent delirium. Here, we review emerging mechanisms into why COPD patients are susceptible to chronic bacterial infections and highlight dysregulated inflammation and production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) as central causes. This underlying chronic infection leaves COPD patients particularly vulnerable to acute viral infections, which further destabilize host immunity to bacteria. The pathogeneses of bacterial and viral exacerbations are significant as clinical symptoms are more severe and there is a marked increase in neutrophilic inflammation and tissue damage. AECOPD triggered by a bacterial and viral co-infection increases circulating levels of the systemic inflammatory marker, serum amyloid A (SAA). SAA is a functional agonist for formyl peptide receptor 2 (FPR2/ALX), where it promotes chemotaxis and survival of neutrophils. Excessive levels of SAA can antagonize the protective actions of FPR2/ALX that involve engagement of specialized pro-resolving mediators, such as resolvin-D1. We propose that the anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory actions of specialized pro-resolving mediators, such as resolvin-D1 should be harnessed for the treatment of AECOPD that are complicated by the co-pathogenesis of viruses and bacteria.
Topics: Animals; Anti-Bacterial Agents; Antiviral Agents; Bacterial Infections; Biomarkers; Disease Susceptibility; Humans; Inflammation Mediators; Metabolic Networks and Pathways; Oxidants; Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive; Superinfection; Virus Diseases
PubMed: 30459754
DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2018.02345 -
Science (New York, N.Y.) Aug 2020Viral infections of the lower respiratory tract are a leading cause of mortality. Mounting evidence indicates that most severe cases are characterized by aberrant immune...
Viral infections of the lower respiratory tract are a leading cause of mortality. Mounting evidence indicates that most severe cases are characterized by aberrant immune responses and do not depend on viral burden. In this study, we assessed how type III interferons (IFN-λ) contribute to the pathogenesis induced by RNA viruses. We report that IFN-λ is present in the lower, but not upper, airways of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). In mice, we demonstrate that IFN-λ produced by lung dendritic cells in response to a synthetic viral RNA induces barrier damage, causing susceptibility to lethal bacterial superinfections. These findings provide a strong rationale for rethinking the pathophysiological role of IFN-λ and its possible use in clinical practice against endemic viruses, such as influenza virus as well as the emerging severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.
Topics: Animals; Betacoronavirus; Bronchoalveolar Lavage Fluid; COVID-19; Cell Proliferation; Coronavirus Infections; Cytokines; Dendritic Cells; Humans; Interferon Type I; Interferons; Lung; Mice; Mice, Inbred C57BL; Nasopharynx; Pandemics; Pneumonia, Viral; Poly I-C; Respiratory Mucosa; SARS-CoV-2; Signal Transduction; Staphylococcal Infections; Superinfection; Toll-Like Receptor 3; Interferon Lambda
PubMed: 32527925
DOI: 10.1126/science.abc3545 -
Frontiers in Immunology 2019Despite the widespread application of vaccination programs and antiviral drug treatments, influenza viruses are still among the most harmful human pathogens. Indeed,... (Review)
Review
Despite the widespread application of vaccination programs and antiviral drug treatments, influenza viruses are still among the most harmful human pathogens. Indeed, influenza results in significant seasonal and pandemic morbidity and mortality. Furthermore, severe bacterial infections can occur in the aftermath of influenza virus infection, and contribute substantially to the excess morbidity and mortality associated with influenza. Here, we review the main features of influenza viruses and current knowledge about the mechanical and immune mechanisms that underlie post-influenza secondary bacterial infections. We present the emerging literature describing the role of "innate-like" unconventional T cells in post-influenza bacterial superinfection. Unconventional T cell populations span the border between the innate and adaptive arms of the immune system, and are prevalent in mucosal tissues (including the airways). They mainly comprise Natural Killer T cells, mucosal-associated invariant T cells and γδ T cells. We provide an overview of the principal functions that these cells play in pulmonary barrier functions and immunity, highlighting their unique ability to sense environmental factors and promote protection against respiratory bacterial infections. We focus on two major opportunistic pathogens involved in superinfections, namely and . We discuss mechanisms through which influenza viruses alter the antibacterial activity of unconventional T cells. Lastly, we discuss recent fundamental advances and possible therapeutic approaches in which unconventional T cells would be targeted to prevent post-influenza bacterial superinfections.
Topics: Animals; Bacterial Infections; Humans; Influenza, Human; Superinfection; T-Lymphocytes
PubMed: 30881357
DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2019.00336 -
Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) Jul 2023The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts on healthcare systems around the world, including in Latin America. In Colombia, there have been over 23,000 confirmed... (Review)
Review
The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts on healthcare systems around the world, including in Latin America. In Colombia, there have been over 23,000 confirmed cases and 100 deaths since 2022, with the highest number of cases occurring in females and the highest number of deaths in males. The elderly and those with comorbidities, such as arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and respiratory diseases, have been particularly affected. Coinfections with other microorganisms, including dengue virus, , and , have also been a significant factor in increasing morbidity and mortality rates in COVID-19 patients. It is important for surveillance systems to be improved and protocols to be established for the early detection and management of coinfections in COVID-19. In addition to traditional treatments, alternatives such as zinc supplementation and nanomedicine may have potential in the fight against COVID-19. It is also crucial to consider the social, labor, educational, psychological, and emotional costs of the pandemic and to address issues such as poverty and limited access to potable water in order to better prepare for future pandemics.
Topics: Male; Female; Humans; Aged; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Pandemics; Colombia; Coinfection; Superinfection
PubMed: 37512147
DOI: 10.3390/medicina59071336 -
Journal of Mathematical Biology Dec 2023A characteristic of malaria in all its forms is the potential for superinfection (that is, multiple concurrent blood-stage infections). An additional characteristic of...
A characteristic of malaria in all its forms is the potential for superinfection (that is, multiple concurrent blood-stage infections). An additional characteristic of Plasmodium vivax malaria is a reservoir of latent parasites (hypnozoites) within the host liver, which activate to cause (blood-stage) relapses. Here, we present a model of hypnozoite accrual and superinfection for P. vivax. To couple host and vector dynamics for a homogeneously-mixing population, we construct a density-dependent Markov population process with countably many types, for which disease extinction is shown to occur almost surely. We also establish a functional law of large numbers, taking the form of an infinite-dimensional system of ordinary differential equations that can also be recovered by coupling expected host and vector dynamics (i.e. a hybrid approximation) or through a standard compartment modelling approach. Recognising that the subset of these equations that model the infection status of the human hosts has precisely the same form as the Kolmogorov forward equations for a Markovian network of infinite server queues with an inhomogeneous batch arrival process, we use physical insight into the evolution of the latter process to write down a time-dependent multivariate generating function for the solution. We use this characterisation to collapse the infinite-compartment model into a single integrodifferential equation (IDE) governing the intensity of mosquito-to-human transmission. Through a steady state analysis, we recover a threshold phenomenon for this IDE in terms of a parameter [Formula: see text] expressible in terms of the primitives of the model, with the disease-free equilibrium shown to be uniformly asymptotically stable if [Formula: see text] and an endemic equilibrium solution emerging if [Formula: see text]. Our work provides a theoretical basis to explore the epidemiology of P. vivax, and introduces a strategy for constructing tractable population-level models of malarial superinfection that can be generalised to allow for greater biological realism in a number of directions.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Plasmodium vivax; Superinfection; Mosquito Vectors; Malaria, Vivax; Malaria
PubMed: 38040981
DOI: 10.1007/s00285-023-02014-3 -
Annual Review of Virology Sep 2022Natural selection acts on cellular organisms by ensuring the genes responsible for an advantageous phenotype consistently reap the phenotypic advantage. This is possible... (Review)
Review
Natural selection acts on cellular organisms by ensuring the genes responsible for an advantageous phenotype consistently reap the phenotypic advantage. This is possible because reproductive cells of these organisms are almost always haploid, separating the beneficial gene from its rival allele at every generation. How natural selection acts on plus-strand RNA viruses is unclear because these viruses frequently load host cells with numerous genome copies and replicate thousands of progeny genomes in each cell. Recent studies suggest that these viruses encode the Bottleneck, Isolate, Amplify, Select (BIAS) mechanism that blocks all but a few viral genome copies from replication, thus creating the environment in which the bottleneck-escaping viral genome copies are isolated from each other, allowing natural selection to reward beneficial mutations and purge lethal errors. This BIAS mechanism also blocks the genomes of highly homologous superinfecting viruses, thus explaining cellular-level superinfection exclusion.
Topics: Cell Line; Genome, Viral; Humans; RNA Viruses; Selection, Genetic; Superinfection; Virus Replication
PubMed: 35567296
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-virology-100520-114758 -
Frontiers in Immunology 2021Virus interference is a phenomenon in which two viruses interact within a host, affecting the outcome of infection of at least one of such viruses. The effect of this... (Review)
Review
Virus interference is a phenomenon in which two viruses interact within a host, affecting the outcome of infection of at least one of such viruses. The effect of this event was first observed in the XVIII century and it was first recorded even before virology was recognized as a distinct science from microbiology. Studies on virus interference were mostly done in the decades between 1930 and 1960 in viruses infecting bacteria and different vertebrates. The systems included experiments and later, more refined assays were done using tissue and cell cultures. Many viruses involved in interference are pathogenic to humans or to economically important animals. Thus the phenomenon may be relevant to medicine and to animal production due to the possibility to use it as alternative to chemical therapies against virus infections to reduce the severity of disease/mortality caused by a superinfecting virus. Virus interference is defined as the host resistance to a superinfection caused by a pathogenic virus causing obvious signs of disease and/or mortality due to the action of an interfering virus abrogating the replication of the former virus. Different degrees of inhibition of the superinfecting virus can occur. Due to the emergence of novel pathogenic viruses in recent years, virus interference has recently been revisited using different pathogens and hosts, including commercially important farmed aquatic species. Here, some highly pathogenic viruses affecting farmed crustaceans can be affected by interference with other viruses. This review presents data on the history of virus interference in hosts including bacteria and animals, with emphasis on the known cases of virus interference in crustacean hosts. Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs) [(Migula 1895) Castellani & Chalmers 1919] (Skuse 1894) (Linnaeus 1758): urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:107387 (Burkenroad 1939): urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:158334 (Linnaeus 1758): urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:107381 (De Man 1879): urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:220137 (Boone 1931): urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:C30A0A50-E309-4E24-851D-01CF94D97F23 (Fabricius 1798): urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:3DD50D8B-01C2-48A7-B80D-9D9DD2E6F7AD (Stimpson 1874): urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:584982.
Topics: Animals; Crustacea; Viral Interference; Virus Diseases
PubMed: 34177916
DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.674216 -
Transboundary and Emerging Diseases Sep 2022We report a corona virus disease (COVID-19) case with unprecedented viral complexity. In the first severe episode, two different severe acute respiratory syndrome...
We report a corona virus disease (COVID-19) case with unprecedented viral complexity. In the first severe episode, two different severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) strains (superinfection) were identified within a week. Three months after discharge, the patient was readmitted and was infected in a nosocomial outbreak with a different strain, suffering a second milder COVID-19 episode.
Topics: Animals; COVID-19; Disease Outbreaks; Reinfection; SARS-CoV-2; Superinfection
PubMed: 34687493
DOI: 10.1111/tbed.14352