Immunology and Infectious Disease Commons^™

Sickle Cell Anemia: Current Treatments And Potential Advancements, Vanessa Martinez

Selected Honors Theses

Sickle cell anemia is a disease that affects red blood cells, specifically the hemoglobin protein. An amino acid mutation in the gene that encodes β-globin leads to malformation of the β subunit of hemoglobin.3, Valine becomes glutamic acid in the mutated β-globin gene.9 The mutation malformation leads to the red blood cells becoming sickle shaped, or crescent shaped.3,4 The sickle shape of red blood cells in individuals with sickle cell disease leads to vaso-occlusive crisis.9 Vaso-occlusive crisis includes complications such as blood clotting, chronic pain, organ failure, organ death, and possibly early mortality.9 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention …

A Comparative Analysis Of The West African Hemorrhagic Fevers Caused By The Lassa And Ebola Viruses, Emiene E. Amali-Adekwu

Selected Honors Theses

Lassa fever (LF) and Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever (EHF) are viral diseases endemic to West Africa.The etiological agent of Lassa fever is an enveloped virus from the Arenaviridae family and was first discovered in 1969 when two missionary nurses died of a mysterious illness in the town of Lassa in Borno state, Nigeria.1 This virus is animal-borne (zoonotic) and is carried by the animal vector Mastomys natalensis (multimammate rat). The Ebola virus is also zoonotic originating from fruit bats belonging to the Pteropodidae family.2 The first reported case of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) was a principal who was believed to have …

Role Of Modern Immunotherapy In Gastrointestinal Malignancies: A Review Of Current Clinical Progress, Zin W. Myint, Gaurav Goel

Markey Cancer Center Faculty Publications

Gastrointestinal (GI) cancers are a group of highly aggressive malignancies with a huge disease burden worldwide. There is clearly a significant unmet need for new drugs and therapies to further improve the treatment outcomes of GI malignancies. Immunotherapy is a novel treatment strategy that is emerging as an effective and promising treatment option against several types of cancers. CTLA-4 and PD-1 are critical immune checkpoint molecules that negatively regulate T cell activation via distinct mechanisms. Immune checkpoint blockade with antibodies directed against these pathways has already shown clinical efficacy that has led to their FDA approval in the treatment of …

Ecological And Evolutionary Relationships Between Feather Mites And Parulid Warblers, Alix Elizabeth Matthews

Student Theses and Dissertations

Host-symbiont relationships are ubiquitous in nature, yet the evolutionary and ecological processes that have shaped these intricate associations are not well understood. Here, I explored the complex symbiosis between feather mites and their warbler hosts. I first considered how ecological context may influence feather mite abundance on two ecologically dissimilar warbler species, and how feather mite abundance may in turn influence the current reproduction and annual survival of hosts. Ecological context of hosts does play a role in feather mite abundance, and even though current reproduction may not be influenced by feather mite abundance, annual survival may be at a …

Estimating Autoantibody Signatures To Detect Autoimmune Disease Patient Subsets, Zhenke Wu, Livia Casciola-Rosen, Ami A. Shah, Antony Rosen, Scott L. Zeger

Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biostatistics Working Papers

Autoimmune diseases are characterized by highly specific immune responses against molecules in self-tissues. Different autoimmune diseases are characterized by distinct immune responses, making autoantibodies useful for diagnosis and prediction. In many diseases, the targets of autoantibodies are incompletely defined. Although the technologies for autoantibody discovery have advanced dramatically over the past decade, each of these techniques generates hundreds of possibilities, which are onerous and expensive to validate. We set out to establish a method to greatly simplify autoantibody discovery, using a pre-filtering step to define subgroups with similar specificities based on migration of labeled, immunoprecipitated proteins on sodium dodecyl sulfate …

Disease Introduction By Aboriginal Humans In North America And The Pleistocene Extinction, Zachary D. Nickell, Matthew D. Moran

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

While overhunting and climate change have been the major hypotheses to explain the late-Pleistocene New World megafaunal extinctions, the role of introduced disease has only received brief attention. Here, we review pre-Columbian diseases endemic to aboriginal Americans and evaluate their potential to cause large-scale mortality in Pleistocene mammals. Of the probable communicable diseases present in pre-Columbian times, we regard anthrax and tuberculosis as viable candidates. These two diseases demonstrate characteristics that could have made them deadly to immunologically naïve populations. Introduced disease, as a primary cause or interacting with overhunting and climate change, could have contributed to the decline and …

Glucans And The Poultry Immune System, Jacquie Jacob, Anthony J. Pescatore

Animal and Food Sciences Faculty Publications

With the reduced availability of antibiotics, poultry producers are looking for feed additives to stimulate the immune system of their birds. Some beta-glucans have been shown to improve gut health in poultry subjected to a bacterial challenge, to increase the flow of new immunocytes into the various lymphoid organs, to increase macrophage function, to increase antibody titers after a vaccination and to function as an anti-inflammatory immunomodulator. As a result, beta-glucans may provide a tool for producers trying to reduce or eliminate the use of antibiotics in poultry diets.

Creation Of An Immunodeficient Hla-Transgenic Mouse (Humamice) And Functional Validation Of Human Immunity After Transfer Of Hla-Matched Human Cells, Yang Zeng, Bingrun Liu, Marie-Therese Rubio, Xinyue Wang, David M. Ojcius, Ruoping Tang, Antoine Durrbach, Zhitao Ru, Yusen Zhou, Yu-Chun Lone

All Dugoni School of Dentistry Faculty Articles

Research on human immunology has been hindered by the lack of optimal small animal models, given that the protective immune responses of human and non-human species show significant differences. However, due to ethical constraints[1] and the high cost of clinical trials, it is urgent to improve the current animal models that can mimic faithfully human physiology, particularly the human immune system (HIS). HIS mice had been generated recently by engrafting human hematopoietic stem cells (hHSCs) or human peripheral mononuclear cells (hPBMCs) into highly immuno-deficient mice such as NSG, NOG or NRG mice. However, a major experimental drawback for studies using …

Validation Of The Pre-B Cell Receptor As A Therapeutic Target In B Cell Precursor Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Michael Frank Erasmus

Biomedical Sciences ETDs

This dissertation is built upon the fundamental idea that the pre-B cell receptor (pre-BCR) is important to leukemia cell survival and a logical therapeutic target in B cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (BCP-ALL). The pre-BCR is expressed early at a specific stage during B cell development where it plays a central role in survival of healthy B lymphocytes. This receptor is composed of the membrane heavy chain (mIgμ) associated with surrogate light chain components, 5 and VpreB. Through the use of advanced imaging modalities, in particular two-color single particle tracking (SPT), we showed that pre-BCRs formed transient, homotypic interactions. These …

Pulmonary Microrna Profiles Identify Involvement Of Creb1 And Sec14l3 In Bronchial Epithelial Changes In Allergic Asthma., Sabine Bartel, Nikola Schulz, Francesca Alessandrini, Andrea C Schamberger, Philipp Pagel, Fabian J Theis, Katrin Milger, Elfriede Noessner, Stephen M Stick, Anthony Kicic, Oliver Eickelberg, Robert J Freishtat, Susanne Krauss-Etschmann

Medicine Faculty Publications

Asthma is highly prevalent, but current therapies cannot influence the chronic course of the disease. It is thus important to understand underlying early molecular events. In this study, we aimed to use microRNAs (miRNAs) - which are critical regulators of signaling cascades - to identify so far uncharacterized asthma pathogenesis pathways. Therefore, deregulation of miRNAs was assessed in whole lungs from mice with ovalbumin (OVA)-induced allergic airway inflammation (AAI). In silico predicted target genes were confirmed in reporter assays and in house-dust-mite (HDM) induced AAI and primary human bronchial epithelial cells (NHBE) cultured at the air-liquid interface. We identified and …

Demographic Transition And The Dynamics Of Measles In Six Provinces In China: A Modeling Study, Sheng Li, Chao Ma, Lixin Hao, Qiru Su, Zhijie An, Fubao Ma, Shuyun Xie, Aiqiang Xu, Yangyang Zhang, Zhengrong Ding, Hui Li, Lisa Cairns, Huaqing Wang, Huiming Luo, Ning Wang, Li Li, Matthew J. Ferrari

Publications and Research

Background Industrialization and demographic transition generate nonstationary dynamics in human populations that can affect the transmission and persistence of infectious diseases. Decades of increasing vaccination and development have led to dramatic declines in the global burden of measles, but the virus remains persistent in much of the world. Here we show that a combination of demographic transition, as a result of declining birth rates, and reduced measles prevalence, due to improved vaccination, has shifted the age distribution of susceptibility to measles throughout China.

Methods and findings We fit a novel time-varying catalytic model to three decades of age-specific measles case …

Co-Occurrence Patterns Of Bat Flies On Neotropical Chiroptera, Mitchell Louis Schooler

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Parasite-host systems provide excellent opportunities to explore ecological dynamics such as competition, competitive exclusion, and co-occurrence. The distribution of streblid bat flies on their host bats were examined for patterns of species co-occurrence and to understand mechanisms driving these patterns. The purpose of this study was to determine patterns of co-occurrence among individuals of different Neotropical bat fly species. After establishing patterns of co-occurrence, tests on whether variation in fly morphology was linked to observed patterns of co-occurrence were performed. Co-occurrence patterns were determined using null model analyses, and a predominant pattern of aggregation was detected. To examine the relationship …

Development Of An Interleukin-4-Inducing Principle From Schistosoma Mansoni Eggs (Ipse)-Specific Pcr Assay As A Quantitative Predictor Of Schistosomiasis-Associated Morbidity, Dannah Farah, Evaristis Mbanefo, Michael H. Hsieh

GW Research Days 2016 - 2020

Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease affecting between 200-500 million people worldwide. The two species causing most human cases of schistosomiasis are Schistosoma mansoni and Schistosoma haematobium. The gold standard for diagnosis is parasitological detection of parasite eggs in stool using the Kato-Katz method. Counting eggs shed in stool is labor-intensive and inaccurate. Interleukin-4- inducing principle from Schistosoma mansoni eggs (IPSE) is the most abundant secreted protein from schistosome eggs. We hypothesized that the mRNA transcripts of the IPSE protein may be found in the liver tissue and stool of experimentally infected animals, and that these transcripts can be specifically …

Overcoming Hurdles To Development Of A Vaccine Against Pneumocystis Jirovecii, Beth A. Garvy

Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics Faculty Publications

Development of Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) is a common problem among immunosuppressed individuals. There are windows of opportunity in which vaccination would be beneficial, but to date, no vaccines have made it to clinical trials. Significant hurdles to vaccine development include host range specificity, making it difficult to translate from animal models to humans. Discovery of cross-reactive epitopes is critical to moving vaccine candidates from preclinical animal studies to clinical trials.

Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha-Induced Recruitment Of Inflammatory Mononuclear Cells Leads To Inflammation And Altered Brain Development In Murine Cytomegalovirus-Infected Newborn Mice, Maria C. Seleme, Kate Kosmac, Stipan Jonjic, William J. Britt

Physical Therapy Faculty Publications

Congenital human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infection is a significant cause of abnormal neurodevelopment and long-term neurological sequelae in infants and children. Resident cell populations of the developing brain have been suggested to be more susceptible to virus-induced cytopathology, a pathway thought to contribute to the clinical outcomes following intrauterine HCMV infection. However, recent findings in a newborn mouse model of the infection in the developing brain have indicated that elevated levels of proinflammatory mediators leading to mononuclear cell activation and recruitment could underlie the abnormal neurodevelopment. In this study, we demonstrate that treatment with tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α)-neutralizing …

A Review Of The Role Of Interleukin-6 On Disease Progression In Epithelial Ovarian Cancer, Urmimala Chaudhuri

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Ovarian cancer is one of the most harmful gynecological cancers and has one of the highest mortality rates. As ovarian cancer progresses, the patient has changes to the immune system and energy metabolism with symptoms being weight loss, nausea, and fatigue. Changes to the immune system include overexpression of proinflammatory cytokines. One such cytokine is Interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is a useful prognostic marker to measure disease progression. IL-6 is thought to promote cancer cell proliferation by upregulating apoptosis inhibitory proteins. IL-6 also plays a role in ascites formation. While tumors may initially respond to chemotherapy treatment, most patients will have …

Analysis Of Antibody-Induced Plasmodium Falciparum Sporozoites Through Scanning Electron Microscopy, Sagorika Bera

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Malaria is a devastating disease that continues to affect millions of people worldwide every year. Specifically, Plasmodium falciparum is the most common human malaria parasite, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. P. falciparum causes the most malignant and debilitating symptoms with the highest mortality and complication rates. Even with the worldwide efforts of many researchers and organizations, the road to discovering a vaccine has been difficult and challenging. Due do to the improvements in in vitro liver stage assays as well as rodent models of mammalian malaria, pre-erythrocytic stages of malaria have become a more accessible target for experimental studies. These vaccine …

Development Of Tools For Stable Transfection In The Human Filarial Parasite Brugia Malayi Via The Piggybac Transposon System, Johan Chabanon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Brugia malayi is one of three species of nematode known to cause lymphatic filariasis (LF) in humans. LF infects over 120 million people, causing debilitating disease. Various global programs have been launched in the past 20 years to eliminate LF. These programs have greatly scaled up the resources and efforts allocated to halting the transmission and reducing disease burden. Only a few drugs are used to treat LF, and resistance is thus a devastating possibility. Research aimed at identifying new drug targets could therefore prove essential in elimination of LF.

Genetic manipulation of B. malayi has been limited to transient …

Complex Interactive Effects Of Water Mold, Herbicide, And The Fungus Batrachochytrium Dendrobatidis On Pacific Treefrog Hyliola Regilla Hosts, John M. Romansic, James E. Johnson, R. Steven Wagner, Rebecca H. Hill, Christopher A. Gaulke, Vance T. Vredenburg, Andrew R. Blaustein

Biology Faculty Scholarship

Infectious diseases pose a serious threat to global biodiversity. However, their ecological impacts are not independent of environmental conditions. For example, the pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which has contributed to population declines and extinctions in many amphibian species, interacts with several environmental factors to influence its hosts, but potential interactions with other pathogens and environmental contaminants are understudied. We examined the combined effects of Bd, a water mold (Achlya sp.), and the herbicide Roundup® Regular (hereafter, Roundup®) on larval Pacific treefrog Hyliola regilla hosts. We employed a 2 wk, fully factorial laboratory experiment with 3 …

The Five Immune Forces Impacting Dna-Based Cancer Immunotherapeutic Strategy, Suneetha Amara, Venkataswarup Tiriveedhi

Biology Faculty Research

DNA-based vaccine strategy is increasingly realized as a viable cancer treatment approach. Strategies to enhance immunogenicity utilizing tumor associated antigens have been investigated in several pre-clinical and clinical studies. The promising outcomes of these studies have suggested that DNA-based vaccines induce potent T-cell effector responses and at the same time cause only minimal side-effects to cancer patients. However, the immune evasive tumor microenvironment is still an important hindrance to a long-term vaccine success. Several options are currently under various stages of study to overcome immune inhibitory effect in tumor microenvironment. Some of these approaches include, but are not limited to, …

Dynamic Transcriptomes Identify Biogenic Amines And Insect-Like Hormonal Regulation For Mediating Reproduction In Schistosoma Japonicum., Jipeng Wang, Ying Yu, Haimo Shen, Tao Qing, Yuanting Zheng, Qing Li, Xiaojin Mo, Shuqi Wang, Nana Li, Riyi Chai, Bin Xu, Mu Liu, Paul J Brindley, Donald P Mcmanus, Zheng Feng, Leming Shi, Wei Hu

Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine Faculty Publications

Eggs produced by the mature female parasite are responsible for the pathogenesis and transmission of schistosomiasis. Female schistosomes rely on a unique male-induced strategy to accomplish reproductive development, a process that is incompletely understood. Here we map detailed transcriptomic profiles of male and female Schistosoma japonicum across eight time points throughout the sexual developmental process from pairing to maturation. The dynamic gene expression pattern data reveal clear sex-related characteristics, indicative of an unambiguous functional division between males and females during their interplay. Cluster analysis, in situ hybridization and RNAi assays indicate that males likely use biogenic amine neurotransmitters through the …

Spotlight On Blisibimod And Its Potential In The Treatment Of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Evidence To Date, Aleksander Lenert, Timothy B. Niewold, Petar Lenert

Internal Medicine Faculty Publications

B cells in general and BAFF (B cell activating factor of the tumor necrosis factor [TNF] family) in particular have been primary targets of recent clinical trials in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). In 2011, belimumab, a monoclonal antibody against BAFF, became the first biologic agent approved for the treatment of SLE. Follow-up studies have shown excellent long-term safety and tolerability of belimumab. In this review, we critically analyze blisibimod, a novel BAFF-neutralizing agent. In contrast to belimumab that only blocks soluble BAFF trimer but not soluble 60-mer or membrane BAFF, blisibimod blocks with high affinity all three forms of BAFF. …

P23. Elucidation Of The Signaling Pathway Of Mertk, Kyle Taruc

Western Research Forum

Background

Mer Tyrosine Kinase (MERTK) is a receptor which mediates efferocytosis – removal of apoptotic cells by phagocytes such as macrophages. MERTK plays a critical role in homeostasis, with mutations in MERTK associated with the development and progression of atherosclerosis, the buildup of cholesterol-laden plaque in the sub-arterial space. Indeed, one MERTK allele is associated with 66% (heterozygous) to 75% (homozygous) protection from atherosclerosis, while other alleles and SNP’s pre-dispose to atherosclerosis and autoimmunity. Complications resulting from atherosclerosis, including heart attack and stroke, are currently the second leading cause of mortality in Canada. Despite the importance of MERTK in atherosclerosis …

Pulmonary Surfactant Fortified With Cath-2 As A Novel Therapy For Bacterial Pneumonia, Brandon J. Baer

Western Research Forum

Background: Bacterial pneumonia is a leading cause of death worldwide, with high mortality rates persisting even after antibiotic treatment. Current treatments for pneumonia involve administration of antibiotics, however after the bacteria are killed they release toxic substances that induce inflammation and lung dysfunction. Host defense peptides represent a potential solution to this problem through their ability to down regulate inflammation. However, effective delivery to the lung is difficult because of the complex branching structure of the airways. My study addresses this delivery problem by using exogenous surfactant, a pulmonary delivery vehicle capable of improving spreading of these peptides throughout the …

Impact Of A National Guideline On Antibiotic Selection For Hospitalized Pneumonia., Derek J Williams, Matthew Hall, Jeffrey S Gerber, Mark I Neuman, Adam L Hersh, Thomas V Brogan, Kavita Parikh, Sanjay Mahant, Anne J Blaschke, Samir S Shah, Carlos G Grijalva

Pediatrics Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: We evaluated the impact of the 2011 Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society/Infectious Diseases Society of America pneumonia guideline and hospital-level implementation efforts on antibiotic prescribing for children hospitalized with pneumonia.

METHODS: We assessed inpatient antibiotic prescribing for pneumonia at 28 children's hospitals between August 2009 and March 2015. Each hospital was also surveyed regarding local implementation efforts targeting antibiotic prescribing and organizational readiness to adopt guideline recommendations. To estimate guideline impact, we used segmented linear regression to compare the proportion of children receiving penicillins in March 2015 with the expected proportion at this same time point had the guideline not …

A Potent Antimalarial Benzoxaborole Targets A Plasmodium Falciparum Cleavage And Polyadenylation Specificity Factor Homologue., Ebere Sonoiki, Caroline L. Ng, Marcus C. S. Lee, Denghui Guo, Yong-Kang Zhang, Yasheen Zhou, M. R. K. Alley, Vida Ahyong, Laura M. Sanz, Maria Jose Lafuente-Monasterio, Chen Dong, Patrick G. Schupp, Jiri Gut, Jenny Legac, Roland A. Cooper, Francisco-Javier Gamo, Joseph Derisi, Yvonne R. Freund, David A. Fidock, Philip J. Rosenthal

Natural Sciences and Mathematics | Faculty Scholarship

Benzoxaboroles are effective against bacterial, fungal and protozoan pathogens. We report potent activity of the benzoxaborole AN3661 against Plasmodium falciparum laboratory-adapted strains (mean IC50 32 nM), Ugandan field isolates (mean ex vivo IC50 64 nM), and murine P. berghei and P. falciparum infections (day 4 ED90 0.34 and 0.57 mg kg-1, respectively). Multiple P. falciparum lines selected in vitro for resistance to AN3661 harboured point mutations in pfcpsf3, which encodes a homologue of mammalian cleavage and polyadenylation specificity factor subunit 3 (CPSF-73 or CPSF3). CRISPR-Cas9-mediated introduction of pfcpsf3 mutations into parental lines recapitulated AN3661 resistance. PfCPSF3 homology models placed these …

The Evaluation Of Carbon Dioxide-Independent Media For Toxoplasma Gondii Growth, Matthew C. Martens

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Toxoplasma gondii is a human pathogen that plays a role as the causative agent of toxoplasmosis, a disease that produces many deleterious effects for immunocompromised individuals and infants. Current research involving this intracellular parasite requires the use and continues maintenance of costly cell incubators attached to bulky carbon dioxide canisters. To reduce laboratory costs and space requirements, we, therefore, propose a novel procedure by which human foreskin fibroblasts, as well as Toxoplasma gondii tachyzoites, may be grown in a commercially available carbon dioxide-independent media. Growth assays utilizing resazurin dye or relative fluorescence from parasites modified with a red fluorescent protein …

Foxo3 Increases Mir-34a To Cause Palmitate-Induced Cholangiocyte Lipoapoptosis, Sathish Kumar Natarajan, Bailey A. Stringham, Ashley M. Mohr, Cody J. Wehrkamp, Sizhao Lu, Mary Anne Phillippi, Duygu Dee Harrison-Findik, Justin L. Mott

School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences: Faculty Publications

Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) patients have elevated plasma saturated free fatty acid levels. These toxic fatty acids can induce liver cell death and our recent results demonstrated that the biliary epithelium may be susceptible to lipotoxicity. Here, we explored the molecular mechanisms of cholangiocyte lipoapoptosis in cell culture and in an animal model of NASH. Treatment of cholangiocytes with palmitate (PA) showed increased caspase 3/7 activity and increased levels of cleaved poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase and cleaved caspase 3, demonstrating cholangiocyte lipoapoptosis. Interestingly, treatment with PA significantly increased the levels of microRNA miR-34a, a pro-apoptotic microRNA known to be elevated in NASH. …

A Blueprint To Evaluate One Health, Simon R. Rüegg, Barry J. Mcmahon, Barbara Häsler, Roberto Esposito, Helen O'Shea, Et Al

Department of Biological Sciences Publications

One Health (OH) positions health professionals as agents for change and provides a platform to manage determinants of health that are often not comprehensively captured in medicine or public health alone. However, due to the organization of societies and disciplines, and the sectoral allocation of resources, the development of transdisciplinary approaches requires effort and perseverance. Therefore, there is a need to provide evidence on the added value of OH for governments, researchers, funding bodies, and stakeholders. This paper outlines a conceptual framework of what OH approaches can encompass and the added values they can provide. The framework was developed during …

Elevated Prevalence Of Helicobacter Species And Virulence Factors In Opisthorchiasis And Associated Hepatobiliary Disease., Raksawan Deenonpoe, Eimorn Mairiang, Pisaln Mairiang, Chawalit Pairojkul, Yaovalux Chamgramol, Gabriel Rinaldi, Alex Loukas, Paul J. Brindley, Banchob Sripa

Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine Faculty Publications

Recent reports suggest that Opisthorchis viverrini serves as a reservoir of Helicobacter and implicate Helicobacter in pathogenesis of opisthorchiasis-associated cholangiocarcinoma (CCA). Here, 553 age-sex matched cases and controls, 293 and 260 positive and negative for liver fluke O. viverrini eggs, of residents in Northeastern Thailand were investigated for associations among infection with liver fluke, Helicobacter and hepatobiliary fibrosis. The prevalence of H. pylori infection was higher in O. viverrini-infected than uninfected participants. H. pylori bacterial load correlated positively with intensity of O. viverrini infection, and participants with opisthorchiasis exhibited higher frequency of virulent cagA-positive H. pylori than those free of …