21 research outputs found
Rift Valley fever in Kruger National Park : do buffalo play a role in the inter-epidemic circulation of virus?
Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a zoonotic mosquito-borne virus disease of livestock and
wild ruminants that has been identified as a risk for international spread. Typically,
the disease occurs in geographically limited outbreaks associated with high rainfall
events and can cause massive losses of livestock. It is unclear how RVF virus persists
during inter-epidemic periods but cryptic cycling of the virus in wildlife populations
may play a role. We investigated the role that free-living African buffalo (Syncerus
caffer caffer) might play in inter-epidemic circulation of the virus and looked for
geographic, age and sex patterns of Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) infection in African
buffalo. Buffalo serum samples were collected (n = 1615) in Kruger National
Park (KNP), South Africa, during a period of 1996â2007 and tested for antibodies
to RVF. We found that older animals were more likely to be seropositive for anti-
RVFV antibody than younger animals, but sex was not correlated with the likelihood
of being anti-RVFV antibody positive. We also found geographic variation
within KNP; herds in the south were more likely to have acquired anti-RVFV antibody
than herds farther north â which could be driven by host or vector ecology. In
all years of the study between 1996 and 2007, we found young buffalo (under
2 years of age) that were seropositive for anti-RVFV antibody, with prevalence ranging
between 0 and 27% each year, indicating probable circulation. In addition, we
also conducted a 4-year longitudinal study on 227 initially RVFV seronegative buffalo
to look for evidence of seroconversion outside known RVF outbreaks within
our study period (2008â2012). In the longitudinal study, we found five individuals
that seroconverted from anti-RVFV antibody negative to anti-RVFV antibody positive,
outside of any detected outbreak. Overall, our results provide evidence of longterm
undetected circulation of RVFV in the buffalo population.This work was supported in part by
a National Science Foundation Ecology of Infectious
Diseases Grant (NSF DEB-1102493/EF-0723928 and
EF-0723918). Brianna Beechler is supported by a Morris
Animal Foundation Fellowship.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1865-16822016-02-27hj201
Maternal plasma folate impacts differential DNA methylation in an epigenome-wide meta-analysis of newborns
Folate is vital for fetal development. Periconceptional folic acid supplementation and food fortification are recommended to prevent neural tube defects. Mechanisms whereby periconceptional folate influences normal development and disease are poorly understood: epigenetics may be involved. We examine the association between maternal plasma folate during pregnancy and epigenome-wide DNA methylation using Illumina" s HumanMethyl450 Beadchip in 1,988 newborns from two European cohorts. Here we report the combined covariate-adjusted results using meta-analysis and employ pathway and gene expression analyses. Four-hundred forty-three CpGs (320 genes) are significantly associated with maternal plasma folate levels during pregnancy (false discovery rate 5%); 48 are significant after Bonferroni correction. Most genes are not known for folate biology, including APC2, GRM8, SLC16A12, OPCML, PRPH, LHX1, KLK4 and PRSS21. Some relate to birth defects other than neural tube defects, neurological functions or varied aspects of embryonic development. These findings may inform how maternal folate impacts the developing epigenome and health outcomes in offspring
Genome-Wide Joint Meta-Analysis of SNP and SNP-by-Smoking Interaction Identifies Novel Loci for Pulmonary Function
Cohort Profile: Pregnancy And Childhood Epigenetics (PACE) Consortium.
Development Psychopathology in context: famil
Rapid measurement and evaluation of the effect of drying conditions on harpagoside content in Harpagophytum procumbens (devil's claw) root
The effect of drying conditions on harpagoside (HS) retention, as well as the use of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for rapid quantification of the iridoids, HS, and 8-Ï-coumaroyl harpagide (8ÏCHG) and moisture, in dried Harpagophytum procumbens (devil's claw) root was investigated. HS retention was significantly (P < 0.05) lower in sun-dried samples as compared to tunnel-dried (60 °C, 30% relative humidity) and freeze-dried samples. The best retention of HS was obtained at 50 °C when evaluating tunnel drying at dry bulb temperatures of 40, 50, and 60 °C and 30% relative humidity. NIRS can effectively predict moisture content with a standard error of prediction (SEP) and correlation coefficient (r) of 0.24% and 0.99, respectively. The HS and 8ÏCHG NIRS calibration models established for both iridoid glucosides can be used for screening purposes to get a semiquantitative classification of devil's claw roots (for HS: SEP = 0.236%, r = 0.64; for 8ÏCHG: SEP = 0.048%, r = 0.73). © 2005 American Chemical Society.Articl
Design and validation of an automated method to detect known adverse drug reactions in MEDLINE: A contribution from the EU-ADR project
Objectives: The aim of this research was to automate the search of publications concerning adverse drug reactions (ADR) by defining the queries used to search MEDLINE and by determining the required threshold for the number of extracted publications to confirm the drug/event association in the literature. Methods: We defined an approach based on the medical subject headings (MeSH) 'descriptor records' and 'supplementary concept records' thesaurus, using the subheadings 'chemically induced' and 'adverse effects' with the 'pharmacological action' knowledge. An expert-built validation set of true positive and true negative drug/adverse event associations (n=61) was used to validate our method. Results: Using a threshold of three of more extracted publications, the automated search method presented a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 100%. For nine different drug/event pairs selected, the recall of the automated search ranged from 24% to 64% and the precision from 93% to 48%. Conclusions: This work presents a method to find previously established relationships between drugs and adverse events in the literature. Using MEDLINE, following a MeSH approach to filter the signals, is a valid option. Our contribution is available as a web service that will be integrated in the final European EU-ADR project (Exploring and Understanding Adverse Drug Reactions by integrative mining of clinical records and biomedical knowledge) automated system