ArticlePLoS neglected tropical diseases2020
Comprehensive characterization of plasma cell-free Echinococcus spp. DNA in echinococcosis patients using ultra-high-throughput sequencing.
Article in PLoS neglected tropical diseases, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Alveolar Echinococcosis in the Early 2020s: A Systematic Review.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Pooled it
- Circulating free DNA as a diagnostic marker for echinococcosis: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Pooled it
- A multiplex PCR-based sequencing method for the diagnosis and differentiation of echinococcosis using plasma samples, a proof-of-concept study.Cell reports methods · 2026Article
- Advances in single-cell transcriptomic sequencing in hepatic echinococcosis.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- Novel miRNA biomarkers for alveolar echinococcosis: sequencing and clinical validation.Parasitology · 2024Article
- Plasma Circulating Cell-Free DNA Facilitated the Detection of an Alveolar Echinococcosis Patient Initially Misdiagnosed as Cystic Echinococcosis: A Case Report.Tropical medicine and infectious disease · 2024Article
- Detection of circulatory E. granulosus-derived cell-free DNA in the plasma and urine of human cystic echinococcosis using an in-house PCR: a potential promising diagnostic biomarker.Molecular biology reports · 2024Article
- Circulating cell-free DNA as a biomarker for diagnosis of Schistosomiasis japonica.Parasites & vectors · 2024Article
- Real-time multiplex PCR for human echinococcosis and differential diagnosis.Parasite (Paris, France) · 2023Article
- Selection of new diagnostic markers for Dirofilaria repens infections with the use of phage display technology.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Molecular diagnosis of alveolar echinococcosis in patients based on frozen and formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue samples.Parasite (Paris, France) · 2022Article
- Diagnostic urinary cfDNA detected in human cystic echinococcosis.Molecular and biochemical parasitology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
29 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEchinococcosis is a life-threatening parasitic disease caused by Echinococcus spp. tapeworms with over one million people affected globally at any time. The Echinococcus spp. tapeworms in the human body release DNA to the circulatory system, which can be a biomarker for echinococcosis. Cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is widely used in medical research and has been applied in various clinical settings. As for echinococcosis, several PCR-based tests had been trialed to detect cell-free Echinococcus spp. DNA in plasma or serum, but the sensitivity was about 20% to 25%. Low sensitivity of PCR-based methods might be related to our limited understanding of the features of cell-free Echinococcus spp. DNA in plasma, including its concentration, fragment pattern and release source. In this study, we applied ultra-high-throughput sequencing to comprehensively investigate the characteristics of cell-free Echinococcus spp. DNA in plasma of echinococcosis patients. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL
findingsWe collected plasma samples from 23 echinococcosis patients. Total plasma cfDNA was extracted and sequenced with a high-throughput sequencing platform. An average of 282 million read pairs were obtained for each plasma sample. Sequencing data were analyzed with bioinformatics workflow combined with Echinococcus spp. sequence database. After identification of cell-free Echinococcus spp. reads, we found that the cell-free Echinococcus spp. reads accounted for 1.8e-5 to 4.0e-9 of the total clean reads. Comparing fragment length distribution of cfDNA between Echinococcus spp. and humans showed that cell-free Echinococcus spp. DNA of cystic echinococcosis (CE) had a broad length range, while that of alveolar echinococcosis (AE) had an obvious peak at about 135 bp. We found that most of the cell-free Echinococcus spp. DNA reads were from the nuclear genome with an even distribution, which might indicate a random release pattern of cell-free Echinococcus spp. DNA. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: With ultra-high-throughput sequencing technology, we analyzed the concentration, fragment length, release source, and other characteristics of cell-free Echinococcus spp. DNA in the plasma of echinococcosis patients. A better understanding of the characteristics of cell-free Echinococcus spp. DNA in plasma may facilitate their future application as a biomarker for diagnosis.
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