Heavy Metals Contamination in Eastern Europe: Background Load from the Atmosphere

In recent years there has been an increased interest in trace metals in the atmosphere and the environmental effects of their deposition. This is to large extent because heavy metals can accumulate in the biosphere and may be toxic to living systems. On the basis of IIASA's TRACE model, the total (wet plus dry) deposition of As, Cd, Pb and Zn has been estimated for Eastern Europe. These are annual averages for rural areas, and relate to the situation in Europe in the mid-1980s. The maximum deposition value is 3.5 mg m^{-2} yr^{-1} for As, 1.5 mg m^{-2} yr^{-1} for Cd and 50 mg m^{-2} yr^{-1} for Zn. All these maxima occur in Southern Poland. The highest total deposition of Pb (15.0-20.0 mg m^{-2} yr^{-1}) has been computed for western Czechoslovakia and also for southern Poland. Deposition levels throughout most of Eastern Europe are at least one or two orders of magnitude greater than observed in remote parts of the world. The annual average concentration of metals in some rural areas are lower, but within a factor of two of drinking water guidelines. This is cause for concern because some short-term concentrations are almost assuredly much higher than the annual average. Because of long-range transport, there is a very significant transboundary exchange of heavy metals within Eastern Europe. As with acid-causing pollutants, the problem of heavy metals contamination in the region depends on the reduction of this transboundary pollution

Physical activity for health

Physical activity plays a substantial role in maintaining people’s good health and mental wellbeing, but that is not all: not only it positively affects the individuals’ mental and physical health, but a lack of physical exercise exerts a negative impact also on the overall economy of a nation. In addition, physical inactivity not only increases the risk of non-communicable diseases (NCD), but also contributes significantly to the increased morbidity and mortality in patients suffering from these diseases. On the contrary, physical activity reduces the risk of NCDs – such as cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, and cancer – in a dose-dependent manner; regular exercise is also associated with many health benefits and delayed mortality. However, understanding the role of physical activity in modern society and creating an awareness in the general population is one of the most important tasks of health and recreation promoters. Correspondingly, there is a dire need to enhance our knowledge, perception, and awareness of physical activity and its impacts on an individual’s health, ultimately contributing to developing a healthy society. The current review will focus on the health benefits of the two most widely studied modifiable lifestyle risk factors, physical activity and diet, focusing particularly on the Mediterranean diet

Towards improving early diagnosis of congenital Chagas disease in an endemic setting.

: Congenital Trypanosoma cruzi transmission is now estimated to account for 22% of new infections, representing a significant public health problem across Latin America and internationally. Treatment during infancy is highly efficacious and well tolerated, but current assays for early detection fail to detect &gt;50% of infected neonates and 9 month follow-up is low. : Women presenting for delivery in two urban hospitals in Santa Cruz department, Bolivia were screened by rapid test. Specimens from infants of infected women were tested by microscopy (micromethod), quantitative PCR (qPCR) and IgM trypomastigote excreted-secreted antigen (TESA)-blots at birth and 1 month, and by IgG serology at 6 and 9 months. : Among 487 infants of 476 seropositive women, congenital T. cruzi infection was detected in 38 infants of 35 mothers (7.8%). In cord blood, qPCR, TESA-blot and micromethod sensitivities/specificities were 68.6%/99.1%, 58.3%/99.1% and 16.7%/100%, respectively. When birth and 1 month results were combined, cumulative sensitivities reached 84.2%, 73.7% and 34.2%, respectively. Low birth weight and/or respiratory distress were reported in 11 (29%) infected infants. Infants with clinical signs had higher parasite loads and were significantly more likely to be detected by micromethod. : The proportion of T. cruzi infected infants with clinical signs has fallen from the 1990s, but symptomatic congenital Chagas disease still represents a significant, albeit increasingly challenging to detect, public health problem. Molecular methods could facilitate earlier diagnosis and circumvent loss to follow-up but remain logistically and economically prohibitive for routine screening in resource-limited settings.<br/

International meta-analysis of PTSD genome-wide association studies identifies sex- and ancestry-specific genetic risk loci.

The risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following trauma is heritable, but robust common variants have yet to be identified. In a multi-ethnic cohort including over 30,000 PTSD cases and 170,000 controls we conduct a genome-wide association study of PTSD. We demonstrate SNP-based heritability estimates of 5-20%, varying by sex. Three genome-wide significant loci are identified, 2 in European and 1 in African-ancestry analyses. Analyses stratified by sex implicate 3 additional loci in men. Along with other novel genes and non-coding RNAs, a Parkinson's disease gene involved in dopamine regulation, PARK2, is associated with PTSD. Finally, we demonstrate that polygenic risk for PTSD is significantly predictive of re-experiencing symptoms in the Million Veteran Program dataset, although specific loci did not replicate. These results demonstrate the role of genetic variation in the biology of risk for PTSD and highlight the necessity of conducting sex-stratified analyses and expanding GWAS beyond European ancestry populations

Prácticas y condiciones institucionales para el desarrollo de la docencia en universidades iberoamericanas

Esta investigación se realizó con base en un modelo analítico diseñado para evaluar las condiciones institucionales que inciden en el desarrollo de la docencia en Iberoamérica, los estudios de caso corresponden a seis universidades de: Argentina, España, México y Venezuela 1. Se identificaron tanto los retos comunes como las necesidades diferenciadas a los que se enfrenta el desarrollo, con calidad, de la docencia universitaria. Se concluyó que el contexto es una variable predominante que impacta el ejercicio de la función docente y que esta es la más importante actividad académica con incidencia en la calidad de la edu-cación superior

Rare copy number variation in posttraumatic stress disorder

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a heritable (h2 = 24-71%) psychiatric illness. Copy number variation (CNV) is a form of rare genetic variation that has been implicated in the etiology of psychiatric disorders, but no large-scale investigation of CNV in PTSD has been performed. We present an association study of CNV burden and PTSD symptoms in a sample of 114,383 participants (13,036 cases and 101,347 controls) of European ancestry. CNVs were called using two calling algorithms and intersected to a consensus set. Quality control was performed to remove strong outlier samples. CNVs were examined for association with PTSD within each cohort using linear or logistic regression analysis adjusted for population structure and CNV quality metrics, then inverse variance weighted meta-analyzed across cohorts. We examined the genome-wide total span of CNVs, enrichment of CNVs within specified gene-sets, and CNVs overlapping individual genes and implicated neurodevelopmental regions. The total distance covered by deletions crossing over known neurodevelopmental CNV regions was significant (beta = 0.029, SE = 0.005, P = 6.3 × 10-8). The genome-wide neurodevelopmental CNV burden identified explains 0.034% of the variation in PTSD symptoms. The 15q11.2 BP1-BP2 microdeletion region was significantly associated with PTSD (beta = 0.0206, SE = 0.0056, P = 0.0002). No individual significant genes interrupted by CNV were identified. 22 gene pathways related to the function of the nervous system and brain were significant in pathway analysis (FDR q < 0.05), but these associations were not significant once NDD regions were removed. A larger sample size, better detection methods, and annotated resources of CNV are needed to explore this relationship further