Ibarra-Meneses, Ana VictoriaSanchez Herrero, CarmenAlvar, JorgeMoreno, JavierCarrillo, Eugenia2019-02-272019-02-272017-09Front Immunol. 2017 Sep 29;8:1208.1664-3224http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12105/7252New biomarkers are needed to identify asymptomatic Leishmania infection as well as immunity following vaccination or treatment. With the aim of finding a robust biomarker to assess an effective cellular immune response, monocyte chemotactic protein 1 (MCP-1) was examined in plasma from soluble Leishmania antigen (SLA)-stimulated whole blood collected from subjects living in a Leishmania infantum-endemic area. MCP-1, expressed 110 times more strongly than IL-2, identified 87.5% of asymptomatic subjects and verified some asymptomatic subjects close to the cutoff. MCP-1 was also significantly elevated in all patients cured of visceral leishmaniasis (VL), unlike IL-2, indicating the specific memory response generated against Leishmania. These results show MCP-1 to be a robust candidate biomarker of immunity that could be used as a marker of cure and to both select and follow the population in vaccine phase I-III human clinical trials with developed rapid, easy-to-use field tools.engVoRhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Asymptomatic infectionBiomarkerChemokinesCytokinesLeishmaniasisMonocyte chemotactic protein 1TreatmentWhole blood assayAtribución 4.0 Internacional290339338120810.3389/fimmu.2017.01208Frontiers in immunologyopen access