Chikungunya outbreak (2015) in the Colombian Caribbean: Latent classes and gender differences in virus infection

We examined the relationship between symptomatology and diverse phenotypic responses. Latent Class Cluster Analysis (LCCA) models were used to characterize patients ’ symptomatology and further identify subgroups of individuals with differential phenotypic response. We found that most individuals presented fever (94.4%), headache (73.28%) and general discomfort (59.4%), which are distinct clinical symptoms of a viral infection. Furthermore, 11/26 (43.2%) of t he categorized symptoms were more frequent in women than in men. LCCA disclosed seven distinctive phenotypic response profiles in this population of CHIKV infected individuals. Interestingly, 282 (24.3%) individuals exhibited a lower symptomatic “extreme” phenotype and 74 (6.4%) patients were wi thin the severe complex “extreme” phenotype. Although clinical symptomatology may be diverse, there are distinct symptoms or group of symptoms that can be correlated with differential phenotypic response and perhaps susceptibility to CHIKV infection, especially in the female population. This sug gests that, comparatively to men, women are a CHIKV at-risk population. Further study is needed to validate these results and determine whether the distinct LCCA profiles are a result of the immune response or a mixture of genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors. Our findings could contribute t o the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches to characterizing CHIKV infection in other populations...
Source: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases - Category: Tropical Medicine Authors: Source Type: research