PLoS ONE (Jan 2015)

Association of Ficolin-2 Serum Levels and FCN2 Genetic Variants with Indian Visceral Leishmaniasis.

  • Anshuman Mishra,
  • Justin S Antony,
  • Pandarisamy Sundaravadivel,
  • Hoang Van Tong,
  • Christian G Meyer,
  • Reshma D Jalli,
  • Thirumalaisamy P Velavan,
  • Kumarasamy Thangaraj

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125940
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 5
p. e0125940

Abstract

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Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), one of the neglected tropical diseases, is endemic in the Indian subcontinent. Ficolins are circulating serum proteins of the lectin complement system and involved in innate immunity.We have estimated ficolin-2 serum levels and analyzed the functional variants of the encoding gene FCN2 in 218 cases of VL and in 225 controls from an endemic region of India.Elevated levels of serum ficolin-2 were observed in VL cases compared to the controls (adjusted PT (p.T236M) was associated with VL (OR=2.2, 95% CI=1.23-7.25, P=0.008) and with high ficolin-2 serum levels. We also found that the FCN2*AAAC haplotype occurred more frequently among healthy controls when compared to cases (OR=0.59, 95%CI=0.37-0.94, P=0.023).Our findings indicate that the FCN2 variant +6359C>T is associated with the occurrence of VL and that ficolin-2 serum levels are elevated in Leishmania infections.