Sepúlveda, Nuno;
Malato, João;
Sotzny, Franziska;
Grabowska, Anna D.;
Fonseca, André;
Cordeiro, Clara;
Graça, Luís;
Biecek, Przemyslaw;
Behrends, Uta;
Mautner, Josef;
Westermeier, Francisco;
Lacerda, Eliana M.;
Scheibenbogen, Carmen
Revisiting IgG Antibody Reactivity to Epstein-Barr Virus in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Its Potential Application to Disease Diagnosis
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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Revisiting IgG Antibody Reactivity to Epstein-Barr Virus in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Its Potential Application to Disease Diagnosis
Contributor:
Sepúlveda, Nuno;
Malato, João;
Sotzny, Franziska;
Grabowska, Anna D.;
Fonseca, André;
Cordeiro, Clara;
Graça, Luís;
Biecek, Przemyslaw;
Behrends, Uta;
Mautner, Josef;
Westermeier, Francisco;
Lacerda, Eliana M.;
Scheibenbogen, Carmen
Published:
Frontiers Media SA, 2022
Published in:
Frontiers in Medicine, 9 (2022)
Language:
Not determined
DOI:
10.3389/fmed.2022.921101
ISSN:
2296-858X
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
Infections by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) are often at the disease onset of patients suffering from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). However, serological analyses of these infections remain inconclusive when comparing patients with healthy controls (HCs). In particular, it is unclear if certain EBV-derived antigens eliciting antibody responses have a biomarker potential for disease diagnosis. With this purpose, we re-analyzed a previously published microarray data on the IgG antibody responses against 3,054 EBV-related antigens in 92 patients with ME/CFS and 50 HCs. This re-analysis consisted of constructing different regression models for binary outcomes with the ability to classify patients and HCs. In these models, we tested for a possible interaction of different antibodies with age and gender. When analyzing the whole data set, there were no antibody responses that could distinguish patients from healthy controls. A similar finding was obtained when comparing patients with non-infectious or unknown disease trigger with healthy controls. However, when data analysis was restricted to the comparison between HCs and patients with a putative infection at their disease onset, we could identify stronger antibody responses against two candidate antigens (EBNA4_0529 and EBNA6_0070). Using antibody responses to these two antigens together with age and gender, the final classification model had an estimated sensitivity and specificity of 0.833 and 0.720, respectively. This reliable case-control discrimination suggested the use of the antibody levels related to these candidate viral epitopes as biomarkers for disease diagnosis in this subgroup of patients. To confirm this finding, a follow-up study will be conducted in a separate cohort of patients.