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Marshall Lauesen posted an update 3 days, 10 hours ago
Cabo Verde aims to eliminate malaria by 2020. In the country, Plasmodium falciparum had been the main parasite responsible for indigenous cases and primaquine is the first line treatment of cases and for radical cure. However, the lack of knowledge of the national prevalence of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency may be one of the constraints to the malaria elimination process. Hence, this first study determines the prevalence of G6PD deficiency (G6PDd) in the archipelago. Blood samples were collected from patients who voluntarily agreed to participate in the study, in the health facilities of eight municipalities on four islands, tested with G6PD CareStart ™ deficiency Rapid Diagnosis Test (RDT). All subjects found to be G6PDd by RDT then underwent enzyme quantification by spectrophotometry. Descriptive statistics and inferences were done using SPSS 22.0 software. A total of 5.062 blood samples were collected, in majority from female patients (78.0%) and in Praia (35.6%). The RDT revealed the prevalence of G6PD deficiency in 2.5% (125/5062) of the general population, being higher in males (5.6%) than in females (1,6%). The highest G6PDd prevalence was recorded in São Filipe, Fogo, (5.4%), while in Boavista no case was detected. The G6PDd activity quantification shown a higher number of partially deficient and deficient males (respectively n = 26 and n = 22) compared to females (respectively n = 18 and n = 7), but more normal females (n = 35) than males (n = 11). According to the WHO classification, most of the G6PDd cases belongs to the class V (34.5%), while the Classes II and I were the less represented with respectively 5.8% and zero cases. This study in Cabo Verde determined the G6PDd prevalence in the population, relatively low compared to other African countries. Further studies are needed to characterize and genotyping the G6PD variants in the country.Although there is a consensus about the evolutionary drivers of animal migration, considerable work is necessary to identify the mechanisms that underlie the great variety of strategies observed in nature. The study of differential migration offers unique opportunities to identify such mechanisms and allows comparisons of the costs and benefits of migration. The purpose of this study was to compare the characteristics of short and long-distance migrations, and fitness consequences, in a long-lived seabird species. We combined demographic monitoring (survival, phenology, hatching success) of 58 Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) breeding on Bonaventure Island (Canada) and biologging technology (Global Location Sensor or GLS loggers) to estimate activity and energy budgets during the non-breeding period for three different migration strategies to the Gulf of Mexico (GM), southeast (SE) or northeast (NE) Atlantic coast of the U.S. Survival, timing of arrival at the colony and hatching success are similar for shorf the favourable conditions in the furthest wintering area.Fungi in the genus Cercospora cause crop losses world-wide on many crop species. The wide host range and success of these pathogens has been attributed to the production of a photoactivated toxin, cercosporin. We engineered tobacco for resistance to Cercospora nicotianae utilizing two strategies 1) transformation with cercosporin autoresistance genes isolated from the fungus, and 2) transformation with constructs to silence the production of cercosporin during disease development. Three C. nicotianae cercosporin autoresistance genes were tested ATR1 and CFP, encoding an ABC and an MFS transporter, respectively, and 71cR, which encodes a hypothetical protein. Resistance to the pathogen was identified in transgenic lines expressing ATR1 and 71cR, but not in lines transformed with CFP. click here Silencing of the CTB1 polyketide synthase and to a lesser extent the CTB8 pathway regulator in the cercosporin biosynthetic pathway also led to the recovery of resistant lines. All lines tested expressed the transgenes, and a direct correlation between the level of transgene expression and disease resistance was not identified in any line. Resistance was also not correlated with the degree of silencing in the CTB1 and CTB8 silenced lines. We conclude that expression of fungal cercosporin autoresistance genes as well as silencing of the cercosporin pathway are both effective strategies for engineering resistance to Cercospora diseases where cercosporin plays a critical role.BACKGROUND The health status, health awareness and health behavior of persons with a migration background often differ from the autochthonous population. Little is known about the proportion of patients with a migration background (PMB) that participate in primary care studies on oral antithrombotic treatment (OAT) in Germany, and whether the quality of their antithrombotic care differs from patients without a migration background. The aim of this paper was to use the results of a cluster-randomized controlled trial (PICANT) to determine the proportion of PMB at different stages of recruitment, and to compare the results in terms of sociodemographic characteristics and antithrombotic treatment. METHODS This study used screening and baseline data from the PICANT trial on oral anticoagulation management in GP practices. For this analysis, we determined the proportion of PMB during the recruitment period at stage 1 (screening of potentially eligible patients), stage 2 (eligible patients invited to participate inlity of anticoagulant care was high in all groups of patients, which is reassuring. To enable the inclusion of more PMB, future primary care research on OAT in Germany should address how best to overcome language barriers. This will be challenging, particularly because the heterogeneity of PMB means the resulting sample sizes for each specific language group are small. TRIAL REGISTRATION Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN41847489.Evaluating the health and function of the gastrointestinal tract can be challenging in all species, but is especially difficult in horses due to their size and length of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Isolation of mRNA of cells exfoliated from the GI mucosa into feces (i.e., the exfoliome) offers a novel means of non-invasively examining the gene expression profile of the GI mucosa. This approach has been utilized in people with colorectal cancer. Moreover, we have utilized this approach in a murine model of GI inflammation and demonstrated that the exfoliome reflects the tissue transcriptome. The ability of the equine exfoliome to provide non-invasive information regarding the health and function of the GI tract is not known. The objective of this study was to characterize the gene expression profile found in exfoliated intestinal epithelial cells from normal horses and compare the exfoliome data with the tissue mucosal transcriptome. Mucosal samples were collected from standardized locations along the GI tract (i.