HTLV-1 infection in solid organ transplant donors and recipients in Spain

Background: HTLV-1 infection is a neglected disease, despite infecting 10–15 million people worldwide and severe illnesses develop in 10% of carriers lifelong. Acknowledging a greater risk for developing HTLV-1 associated illnesses due to immunosuppression, screening is being widely considered in the transplantation setting. Herein, we report the experience with universal HTLV testing of donors and recipients of solid organ transplants in a survey conducted in Spain. Methods: All hospitals belonging to the Spanish HTLV network were invited to participate in the study. Briefly, HTLV antibody screening was performed retrospectively in all specimens collected from solid organ donors and recipients attended since the year 2008. Results: A total of 5751 individuals were tested for HTLV antibodies at 8 sites. Donors represented 2312 (42.2%), of whom 17 (0.3%) were living kidney donors. The remaining 3439 (59.8%) were recipients. Spaniards represented nearly 80%. Overall, 9 individuals (0.16%) were initially reactive for HTLV antibodies. Six were donors and 3 were recipients. Using confirmatory tests, HTLV-1 could be confirmed in only two donors, one Spaniard and another from Colombia. Both kidneys of the Spaniard were inadvertently transplanted. Subacute myelopathy developed within 1 year in one recipient. The second recipient seroconverted for HTLV-1 but the kidney had to be removed soon due to rejection. Immunosuppression was stopped and 3 years later the patient remains in dialysis but otherwise asymptomatic. Conclusion: The rate of HTLV-1 is low but not negligible in donors/recipients of solid organ transplants in Spain. Universal HTLV screening should be recommended in all donor and recipients of solid organ transplantation in Spain. Evidence is overwhelming for very high virus transmission and increased risk along with the rapid development of subacute myelopath

Rapid subacute myelopathy following kidney transplantation from HTLV-1 donors: role of immunosuppresors and failure of antiretrovirals

Two kidney transplant recipients from a single donor became infected with HTLV-1 (human T-lymphotropic virus type 1) in Spain. One developed myelopathy 8 months following surgery despite early prescription of antiretroviral therapy. The allograft was removed from the second recipient at month 8 due to rejection and immunosuppressors discontinued. To date, 3 years later, this patient remains infected but asymptomatic. HTLV-1 infection was recognized retrospectively in the donor, a native Spaniard who had sex partners from endemic regions. Our findings call for a reappraisal of screening policies on donor-recipient organ transplantation. Based on the high risk of disease development and the large flux of persons from HTLV-1 endemic regions, pre-transplant HTLV-1 testing should be mandatory in Spain

ImageCLEF 2020: Multimedia Retrieval in Lifelogging, Medical, Nature, and Security Applications

This paper presents an overview of the 2020 ImageCLEF lab that will be organized as part of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum - CLEF Labs 2020 in Thessaloniki, Greece. ImageCLEF is an ongoing evaluation initiative (run since 2003) that promotes the evaluation of technologies for annotation, indexing and retrieval of visual data with the aim of providing information access to large collections of images in various usage scenarios and domains. In 2020, the 18th edition of ImageCLEF will organize four main tasks: (i) a Lifelog task (videos, images and other sources) about daily activity understanding, retrieval and summarization, (ii) a Medical task that groups three previous tasks (caption analysis, tuberculosis prediction, and medical visual question answering) with new data and adapted tasks, (iii) a Coral task about segmenting and labeling collections of coral images for 3D modeling, and a new (iv) Web user interface task addressing the problems of detecting and recognizing hand drawn website UIs (User Interfaces) for generating automatic code. The strong participation, with over 235 research groups registering and 63 submitting over 359 runs for the tasks in 2019 shows an important interest in this benchmarking campaign. We expect the new tasks to attract at least as many researchers for 2020

Intracellular expression of Tat alters mitochondrial functions in T cells: a potential mechanism to understand mitochondrial damage during HIV-1 replication

HIV-1 replication results in mitochondrial damage that is enhanced during antiretroviral therapy (ART). The onset of HIV-1 replication is regulated by viral protein Tat, a 101-residue protein codified by two exons that elongates viral transcripts. Although the first exon of Tat (aa 1–72) forms itself an active protein, the presence of the second exon (aa 73–101) results in a more competent transcriptional protein with additional functions. Results: Mitochondrial overall functions were analyzed in Jurkat cells stably expressing full-length Tat (Tat101) or one-exon Tat (Tat72). Representative results were confirmed in PBLs transiently expressing Tat101 and in HIV-infected Jurkat cells. The intracellular expression of Tat101 induced the deregulation of metabolism and cytoskeletal proteins which remodeled the function and distribution of mitochondria. Tat101 reduced the transcription of the mtDNA, resulting in low ATP production. The total amount of mitochondria increased likely to counteract their functional impairment. These effects were enhanced when Tat second exon was expressed. Conclusions: Intracellular Tat altered mtDNA transcription, mitochondrial content and distribution in CD4+ T cells. The importance of Tat second exon in non-transcriptional functions was confirmed. Tat101 may be responsible for mitochondrial dysfunctions found in HIV-1 infected patients.We greatly appreciate the secretarial assistance of Mrs Olga Palao. This work was supported by FIPSE (360924/10), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (SAF2010-18388), Spanish Ministry of Health (EC11- 285), AIDS Network ISCIII-RETIC (RD12/0017/0015), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FIS PI12/00506). The work of Sara Rodríguez-Mora is supported by a fellowship of Sara Borrell from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (2013). The work of María Rosa López-Huertas is supported by a fellowship of the European Union Programme Health 2009 (CHAARM).S

ImageCLEF 2019: Multimedia Retrieval in Medicine, Lifelogging, Security and Nature

This paper presents an overview of the ImageCLEF 2019 lab, organized as part of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum - CLEF Labs 2019. ImageCLEF is an ongoing evaluation initiative (started in 2003) that promotes the evaluation of technologies for annotation, indexing and retrieval of visual data with the aim of providing information access to large collections of images in various usage scenarios and domains. In 2019, the 17th edition of ImageCLEF runs four main tasks: (i) a medical task that groups three previous tasks (caption analysis, tuberculosis prediction, and medical visual question answering) with new data, (ii) a lifelog task (videos, images and other sources) about daily activities understanding, retrieval and summarization, (iii) a new security task addressing the problems of automatically identifying forged content and retrieve hidden information, and (iv) a new coral task about segmenting and labeling collections of coral images for 3D modeling. The strong participation, with 235 research groups registering, and 63 submitting over 359 runs, shows an important interest in this benchmark campaign

ImageCLEF 2022: Multimedia Retrieval in Medical, Nature, Fusion, and Internet Applications

ImageCLEF is part of the Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF) since 2003. CLEF 2022 will take place in Bologna, Italy. ImageCLEF is an ongoing evaluation initiative which promotes the evaluation of technologies for annotation, indexing, and retrieval of visual data with the aim of providing information access to large collections of images in various usage scenarios and domains. In its 20th edition, ImageCLEF will have four main tasks: (i) a Medical task addressing concept annotation, caption prediction, and tuberculosis detection; (ii) a Coral task addressing the annotation and localisation of substrates in coral reef images; (iii) an Aware task addressing the prediction of real-life consequences of online photo sharing; and (iv) a new Fusion task addressing late fusion techniques based on the expertise of the pool of classifiers. In 2021, over 100 research groups registered at ImageCLEF with 42 groups submitting more than 250 runs. These numbers show that, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, there is strong interest in the evaluation campaign

Impact of COVID-19 infection on the outcome of patients with ischemic stroke

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: We evaluated whether stroke severity, functional outcome, and mortality are different in patients with ischemic stroke with or without coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. METHODS: A prospective, observational, multicentre cohort study in Catalonia, Spain. Recruitment was consecutive from mid-March to mid-May 2020. Patients had an acute ischemic stroke within 48 hours and a previous modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score of 0 to 3. We collected demographic data, vascular risk factors, prior mRS score, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score, rate of reperfusion therapies, logistics, and metrics. Primary end point was functional outcome at 3 months. Favourable outcome was defined depending on the previous mRS score. Secondary outcome was mortality at 3 months. We performed mRS shift and multivariable analyses. RESULTS: We evaluated 701 patients (mean age 72.3±13.3 years, 60.5% men) and 91 (13%) had COVID-19 infection. Median baseline National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score was higher in patients with COVID-19 compared with patients without COVID-19 (8 [3–18] versus 6 [2–14], P=0.049). Proportion of patients with a favourable functional outcome was 33.7% in the COVID-19 and 47% in the non-COVID-19 group. However, after a multivariable logistic regression analysis, COVID-19 infection did not increase the probability of unfavourable functional outcome. Mortality rate was 39.3% among patients with COVID-19 and 16.1% in the non-COVID-19 group. In the multivariable logistic regression analysis, COVID-19 infection was a risk factor for mortality (hazard ratio, 3.14 [95% CI, 2.10–4.71]; P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Patients with ischemic stroke and COVID-19 infection have more severe strokes and a higher mortality than patients with stroke without COVID-19 infection. However, functional outcome is comparable in both groups