Volume 216, Issue 10, 15 November 2017

Mongolia experienced a large, nationwide, measles outbreak with very high incidence among young adults, despite high historical immunization coverage. A case-control outbreak investigation found that measles risk among adults was associated with hospital exposure and birth outside the capital city.

Zika virus emergence is a major concern for public health. We find extension of a loop within the envelope protein influences stability and pathogenesis. With implications for vaccine development, this motif may distinguish stability and severity across the flavivirus family.

Our modeling results indicate that vaccinating multiple cohorts in Australia produced markedly faster population-level direct/herd effects, compared with a counterfactual scenario of routine vaccination only, and it added benefits in the prevention of HPV-related diseases that will last for decades.

Some HPV DNA detections may represent depositions from infected sexual partners rather than true infections. We used type-specific HPV concordance between sex partners and a biomarker of male cell deposition to estimate the fraction of detections attributable to recent sex.

Randomized comparison of immunogenicity and safety of quadrivalent recombinant versus inactivated vaccine in young adults showed overall comparable antibody titers to vaccine strains, including higher responses to influenza A/H3N2 consistent with better efficacy previously reported in adults 50 or older.

Capsid sequence changes in norovirus GII.17 strains result in loss of blockade antibody binding, indicating that viral evolution, specifically at residues 393–396, may have contributed to the emergence of cluster IIIb strains and the persistence of GII.17 in human populations.

Confirmation of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in the lower respiratory tract is associated with worse clinical outcomes, including increased supplemental oxygen use, decreased supplemental oxygen–free days, and greater mortality rate. Supplemental oxygen–free days as a clinical end point may allow smaller sample sizes for trials evaluating RSV antivirals.

A mouse model of enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) paralytic myelitis can be used to evaluate the efficacy of possible treatment options for EV-D68–associated central nervous system disease.

Plasmodium vivax infections along the Myanmar-China border exhibited high genetic diversity but low polyclonality. Frequent parasite gene flow via human movement contributes to local and cross-border spread of malaria. It is thus important to reinforce and improve existing control efforts along border areas.

We have identified a superior diagnostic biomarker, Pfg17, for detecting asymptomatic reservoirs otherwise missed by the most sensitive molecular method available. Gametocyte transcriptome analyses also improved the repertoire of transmission-stage antigens available for evaluation as candidate vaccines.

¹H nuclear magnetic resonance metabolic profiling of cerebrospinal fluid demonstrated that biochemical markers were associate with presentation of neurological symptoms in African trypanosomiasis, rather than disease stage. Thus, disease staging using standard diagnostic methods may not accurately mirror the invasion of the brain by parasites.

α-(1,3)-Glucan polysaccharide of Aspergillus fumigatus induces human dendritic cell maturation and stimulates regulatory T-cell (Treg) responses by the PD-L1-dependent pathway. PD-L1 inhibition significantly enhanced α-(1,3)-glucan-mediated IFN-γ secretion, indicating that the PD-1–PD-L1 pathway could be targeted to enhance protective immune responses to A. fumigatus infections.

Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) expresses 4 IgA protease variants with distinct cleavage specificities. Two IgA protease variants (B1 and B2) mediate intracellular survival in respiratory epithelial cells, indicating that IgA protease variants play distinct roles in pathogenesis.

Orthologs of the laminin-binding Haemophilus influenzae protein F were identified by in silico mining in 3 other important human pathogens that cause respiratory disease. Protein F orthologs targeted heparin-binding domains of laminin, resulting in adherence to alveolar epithelial cells.

Acute respiratory virus infections often have a prolonged duration in cystic fibrosis patients and predispose the cystic fibrosis lung to bacterial colonization. An experimental enterovirus infection model couples the ΔF508-mutation in CFTR to delayed virus clearance and defective antiviral immunity.

In this study we provide important evidence to show that changes in the epidemiology of pneumococcal serotype 1 sequence types in The Gambia may be a direct consequence of differences in virulence and increased ability to colonize hosts over time.