Keywords
People living with HIV, PLWHA, HIV, AIDS, Biomarker, Saliva
This article is included in the Pathogens gateway.
This article is included in the Manipal Academy of Higher Education gateway.
People living with HIV, PLWHA, HIV, AIDS, Biomarker, Saliva
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), belonging to the Retroviridae family, targets the body’s immune system1. Since it has high affinity for the receptors present on the surface of CD4+ T-lymphocytes and macrophages, it makes a person vulnerable to infection2. Infection of the target cell by HIV results in the production of progeny virions depleting the CD4+ lymphocytes and ensuing immunosuppression of the host. The pathophysiology of HIV involves a dynamic host-virus interaction, resulting in acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in severe cases3. The incubation period for the virus is around 5–10 years in adults4,5. This broad interval between HIV infection and the development of symptoms can be attributed to several hosts and virus-related factors such as the development of new viral strains, the immune status of the host, as well as environmental cofactors6.
HIV viral load, CD4+ T-cell count in peripheral blood and quantitative measurements of soluble markers present in plasma, like neopterin, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFα), interleukins (ILs), beta 2-microglobulin (B2M), soluble CD8, etc have been used as surrogate markers to assess the progression of HIV infection in patients. CD4+ T-cell count also evaluates the efficacy of the host’s immune response to antiretroviral therapy (ART)7–10. The onset of AIDS, which implies a progression of HIV infection, could be predicted accurately by monitoring the percentage of CD4+ T lymphocytes in the peripheral blood11. However, in patients on ART, the CD4+ T-cell counts are not reliable markers to recognize virologic failure in the individual12.
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “a biomarker is an objectively measured and evaluated indicator of normal biologic processes, pathogenic processes, or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention”13. Essentially, a biomarker can represent any entity and can exist as antibodies, microbes, DNA, RNA, lipids, metabolites, or proteins14. These biomolecules provide crucial information that helps us understand the physiologic state of a biological system. Any alteration in their concentration, structure, function, or action within a biological system can be correlated with disease characteristics such as onset, progression, or even regression of the particular disease or a measure of the host response to foreign bodies15. According to a review by Kanekar et al. in 2010, the clinical utility of biomarkers to assess the disease progression for HIV infection is inconclusive16.
Saliva is a complex biological fluid that can mirror the body's health17. It contains several biomolecules such as enzymes, hormones, antibodies, growth factors, antimicrobial constituents, etc. which can function as useful prognostic markers18. A good salivary biomarker to detect the progression of HIV (with high sensitivity and specificity) would help clinicians and oral pathologists to monitor the deterioration of clinical condition in people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA)15,19.
The literature reveals the dearth of evidence on validated biomarkers16. Much of the information on the topic is largely experimental, which has to be systematically compiled and objectively assessed. Therefore, this scoping review is aimed at synthesizing available evidence on salivary markers for disease progression in HIV infection.
To identify pertinent salivary biomarkers consistent with the progression of HIV infection in HIV positive individuals
To systematically review the existing literature on biomarkers in HIV to identify key concepts and gaps
To assess the current levels of evidence, the quality of evidence and provide a synthesis of the currently available salivary biomarkers in HIV infection
People diagnosed with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) as per WHO clinical case definition is “an individual with HIV infection irrespective of the clinical stage (including severe or stage 4 clinical disease, also known as AIDS) confirmed by laboratory criteria according to country definitions and requirements”. We will include longitudinal studies that have measured outcomes of at least two different time points. Cross-sectional studies measuring clinical parameters at only one point will be excluded. Only studies that have reported an association between salivary biomarkers and change in the clinical measure will be included in our scoping review. Due to lack of sufficient resources, studies will be excluded if English language texts are not available.
We will not limit our inclusion based on age, gender, duration of HIV infection, ART status, or demography. Only studies that have reported measurable and quantifiable biological parameters associated with salivary biomarkers will be included. These parameters include, but are not limited to the presence of specific biomolecules, their biologic concentrations, specific gene-phenotype distribution in a population.
Its association with disease progression, its potential to be generalizable to PLWHA irrespective of their age, gender, sensitivity, specificity, reliability, ease of measurement, safety and acceptance to the patient. Additionally, it should reflect a true change in the clinical condition and remain unaffected by symptomatic treatment. We will exclude those studies that fail to meet the criterion of biomarker parameters mentioned. Studies that have not specified the type of surrogate marker used or include the objective measures of a particular biomarker or related only to specific opportunistic infections in HIV will be excluded.
The methodological framework proposed by Arksey and O'Malley20 and the methodological enhancement developed by Levac et al.21 were referred to for this scoping review. The six-stage methodical framework for conducting a scoping review include: “(1) identifying the research question; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) selecting studies; (4) charting the data; (5) collating, summarizing and reporting the results and (6) consulting with relevant stakeholders.”
The research question developed by the research team in consultation with key stakeholders will address the role of salivary biomarkers in assessing the progression of disease in PLWHA. For this review, a quality indicator is ‘an explicitly and measurable item which act as building blocks in the assessment of care’.
Search terms were finalized based on the feedback from the research team, subject experts, and extensive literature review. An experienced search scientist developed the search strategy and co-authors as per the Medline format and tailored to other databases and sources. The search strategy used in this scoping review included: (PLWHA OR PLHIV OR PLWH OR PLWA OR HIV OR (people living with HIV/AIDS) OR (people living with AIDS) OR (acquired AND (immunodeficiency OR immune‐deficiency OR immuno‐deficiency) AND syndrome) OR Immunocompromised OR immune-compromised OR Slim disease) AND ((HIV related oral lesions) OR (Periodontal disease) OR Periodontitis OR (periodontal infection) OR Xerostomia or (dry mouth) OR (salivary gland disease)) OR (Oral candidiasis) OR (hairy leukoplakia) OR (Kaposi sarcoma) OR (linear gingival erythema) OR (necrotizing ulcerative periodontitis) OR (aphthous ulcer) OR (wasting disease))) AND ((biological marker*) OR biomarker* OR saliva* OR biomolecule* OR (bacterial burden*) OR marker*)
The selected search terms will be searched in the title and/or abstract as well as subject headings keywords (eg, MeSH, EMTREE) as appropriate. We will include all articles from the beginning of the databases until October 2020. Only English language studies will be included. The search results from each database will be downloaded and imported onto Mendeley for the removal of duplicates. Following de-duplication, the remaining studies will be imported into the EPPI reviewer Web.
We will use the PICO (Population, Intervention, Control and Outcomes) strategy for formulating a foreground research question (Table 1). Primary studies indexed in the following databases will be searched for inclusion in our review: MEDLINE, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). The reference lists of all included studies will be hand searched for potentially relevant studies.
To ensure that all information pertinent to the research question is adequately captured, our search will include several grey literature sources from relevant databases (e.g. Grey Literature Report, OpenGrey, Web of Science Conference Proceedings). We will further conduct a targeted search of grey literature in the websites of organizations working on HIV/AIDS research on the local, provincial, national, and international levels. Any studies, reports, and conference abstracts identified through these databases, which are of relevance to this review, will be included.
We will undertake a two-step screening process to include all potentially relevant articles in this review: (1) title and abstract screening; (2) full-text screening. In the first stage of screening, two review authors (VD and PP) will independently screen the title and abstract of all retrieved citations for inclusion against a set of minimum inclusion criteria. These criteria will be determined by testing on a sample of abstracts before beginning the abstract review to ensure that they are robust enough to capture all studies pertinent to the primary objective. Articles will be included for full-text screening if either one or both of the review authors deem them relevant to the research question.
All the studies included in the T&A stage will be subject to full-text screening. In this step, both the investigators (VD and PP) will independently screen the full-text articles to assess if they meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria. We will calculate Cohen's κ statistics at both the T&A review stage and the full article review stage to determine inter-rater agreement. Studies will be reviewed another time if there is any discordance regarding the study eligibility. If there are further disagreements, it will be resolved through discussion with a third investigator (RR) until a consensus is reached. A flow diagram will be used to represent the inclusion and exclusion of retrieved studies
The research team will develop a data collection instrument to extract information from the included studies and to confirm study relevance. Study characteristics including publication year, publication type (eg, original research), study design, country, study setting, a specific biomarker used, statistical analysis performed, the association between biomarker tested and disease progression, the effect of therapeutic agents on biomarker changes, economic aspects and acceptability of biomarker, etc will be extracted (see Table 2). The research team will review and pretest the form to make sure that the data extraction form captures all the required information from the included studies accurately.
Data from the included studies will be extracted independently by the two review authors (VD and PP) using the EPPI reviewer22. To ensure a high degree of accuracy of the data extraction, we will compare the independently abstracted data of each reviewer. Both the review authors to ensure consistency in the extracted data will discuss any discrepancies identified in the collected data. The data will be compiled by the EPPI reviewer22.
The quality tool developed by McGhee et al. in 2014 to assess the quality of surrogate biomarkers will be used to assess the overall methodological quality of the studies23.
We will synthesize the data narratively for each biomarker. All the outcomes stated in the studies will be reported. Additionally, we will present a summary of the range of outcomes where feasible.
We will assess the relationship between HIV infection and salivary biomarkers. We will report the effects of this relationship by variables reported in the studies, which were accounted for in the analysis. This review will further include a table of research implications, which will be extracted from each paper by research priorities. Additionally, we will report implications for clinical practice, where relevant. We will report the scoping review according to the PRISMA statement on reporting scoping reviews24.
The proposed scoping review protocol will enable the identification and assessment of salivary biomarkers, which can predict disease progression in patients with HIV infection. Salivary components that mimic HIV infection progression can act as early predictors of the deteriorating clinical condition and serve as an alternative method to monitor the clinical condition. Moreover, its ease of extraction will correspond to greater compliance amongst patients when compared to other biofluids like blood.
The synthesis of evidence from this review will assist in improving our current understanding of biomarkers used to evaluate HIV disease progression. This paper will be the pilot in a series of studies aimed at identifying and validating a salivary biomarker for the potential development of a point of care device, which can assess HIV infection progression.
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Is the rationale for, and objectives of, the study clearly described?
Partly
Is the study design appropriate for the research question?
Yes
Are sufficient details of the methods provided to allow replication by others?
Yes
Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?
Not applicable
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis, Infectious Diseases, HIV/AIDS, Diagnostics for developing world
Is the rationale for, and objectives of, the study clearly described?
No
Is the study design appropriate for the research question?
No
Are sufficient details of the methods provided to allow replication by others?
No
Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?
No
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: Laboratory science, HIV immunology and virology, Laboratory system strengthening, diagnostics
Is the rationale for, and objectives of, the study clearly described?
Yes
Is the study design appropriate for the research question?
Yes
Are sufficient details of the methods provided to allow replication by others?
Yes
Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?
Yes
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: Community medicine, vaccines, non-communicable diseases, maternal and child health, HIV, infectious diseases
Alongside their report, reviewers assign a status to the article:
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Version 1 19 Feb 21 |
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Provide sufficient details of any financial or non-financial competing interests to enable users to assess whether your comments might lead a reasonable person to question your impartiality. Consider the following examples, but note that this is not an exhaustive list:
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