9 research outputs found
An investigation into the particle volume scattering function variability in a cascading reservoir system
Fishes from the Itapecuru River basin, State of MaranhĂŁo, northeast Brazil
The Itapecuru is a relatively large river in the northeastern Brazilian state of MaranhĂŁo. During several expeditions to this basin, we collected 69 fish species belonging to 65 genera, 29 families and 10 orders. Characiformes and Siluriformes were the orders with the largest number of species and Characidae, Loricariidae, Cichlidae, Auchenipteridae and Pimelodidae were the richest families. About 30% of the fish fauna of the Itapecuru basin is endemic or restricted to northeastern Brazil. Just over a fifth (22%) of the species is also known to occur in the Amazon basin and only a few are more widely distributed in South American
Impact of the 2009 extreme water level variation on phytoplankton community structure in Lower Amazon floodplain lakes
Distributed system of autonomous buoys for scalable deployment and monitoring of large waterbodies
Disruption of the GHRH receptor and its impact on children and adults: The Itabaianinha syndrome
Inflammation enhances the risks of stroke and death in chronic chagas disease patients.
Ischemic strokes have been implicated as a cause of death in Chagas disease patients. Inflammation has been recognized as a key component in all ischemic processes, including the intravascular events triggered by vessel interruption, brain damage and repair. In this study, we evaluated the association between inflammatory markers and the death risk (DR) and stroke risk (SR) of patients with different clinical forms of chronic Chagas disease. The mRNA expression levels of cytokines, transcription factors expressed in the adaptive immune response (Th1, Th2, Th9, Th17, Th22 and regulatory T cell), and iNOS were analyzed by realtime PCR in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of chagasic patients who exhibited the indeterminate, cardiac, digestive and cardiodigestive clinical forms of the disease, and the levels of these transcripts were correlated with the DR and SR. Cardiac patients exhibited lowermRNA nexpression levels of GATA-3, FoxP3, AHR, IL-4, IL-9, IL-10 and IL 22 but exhibited higher expression of IFN-Îł and TNF-Îą compared with indeterminate patients. Digestive patients showed similar levels of GATA-3, IL-4 and IL-10 than indeterminate patients. Cardiodigestive patients exhibited higher levels of TNF-Îą compared with indeterminate and digestive patients. Furthermore, we demonstrated that patients with high DR and SR exhibited lower GATA-3, FoxP3, and IL-10 expression and higher IFN-Îł, TNF-Îą and iNOS mRNA expression than patients with low DR and SR. A negative correlation was observed between Foxp3 and IL-10 mRNA expression and the DR and SR. Moreover, TNF-Îą and iNOS expression was positively correlated with DR and SR. Our data suggest that an inflammatory imbalance in chronic Chagas disease patients is associated with a high DR and SR. This study provides a better understanding of the stroke pathobiology in the general population and might aid the development of therapeutic strategies for controlling the morbidity and mortality of Chagas disease