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. 2020 Aug 11;11:1811. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2020.01811

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Copyright © 2020 van Hooij, Tió-Coma, Verhard, Khatun, Alam, Tjon Kon Fat, de Jong, Sufian Chowdhury, Corstjens, Richardus and Geluk.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Correlation of leprosy disease and M. leprae infection/colonization status in households with innate immune markers. (A) Whole blood without stimulus (Med) or stimulated with M. leprae whole cell sonicate (WCS) was frozen after 24 h. Levels of 8 proteins (αPGL-I IgM, S100A12, ApoA1, CCL4, IP-10, IL-6, IL-1Ra, and CRP) were assessed by up-converting phosphor lateral flow assays (UCP-LFAs) in supernatants of WBA for 31 households of index cases with multibacillary (MB) leprosy (bacterial index ≥2). The proportion of household contacts (HCs) diagnosed with leprosy upon first clinical examination (%DevLep) or with M. leprae DNA presence in nasal swabs (%NS) or slit-skin smears (%SSS) was calculated per household. These percentages and the RLEP Ct values determined by qPCR in NS and SSS were correlated with the levels of the assessed immune markers. The heatmap indicates the correlation coefficient (R), ranging from −1 (green) to 1 (orange) as determined using GraphPad Prism. Significant correlations (p < 0.05) are indicated with an asterisk (*), highly significant (p < 0.0001) are indicated with a black asterisk (*). (B) Significantly different (p < 0.05) levels of immune markers observed in HCs of M. leprae DNA positive (NS_Pos) and negative (NS_Neg) households. Ratio values (y-axis) represent the level of the assessed marker and were determined by dividing the signal of the test line (T) by the signal of the flow control (FC) line of the up-converting phosphor lateral flow assays. (C) Significantly different (p < 0.05) levels of immune markers observed in HCs of M. leprae DNA positive (SSS_Pos) and negative (SSS_Neg) households. (D) Significantly different (p < 0.05) levels of immune markers between HCs living in households where leprosy was diagnosed among contacts (DevLep) and in households where leprosy was not observed (NoLep).