Traditional Drugs: Mechanisms of Immunosuppressor and Corticosteroid Therapies for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

The inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are immunological dysfunctions of the gastrointestinal tract that develop because of multifactorial processes, including genetic predisposition, gut dysbiosis, and excessive inflammation in susceptible subjects. These pathologies affect millions of people worldwide, with substantial impact on healthcare systems and patients’ quality of life. Considering the chronic inflammation that underlies the IBD presentation, the main treatment options are related to the control of patients’ inflammatory response, through immunosuppressor and modulatory therapies. Therefore, in this chapter we reviewed the main mechanisms associated with the treatments that are aimed at suppressing mucosal immunity and the effects of corticosteroid therapies in Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis

Prevalence of Streptococcus agalactiae colonization in pregnant women from the 18th Health Region of Paraná State

Introduction The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of GBS colonization in pregnant women in a public health service. Methods A study of 496 pregnant women at 35-37 gestational weeks was conducted from September 2011 to March 2014 in 21 municipalities of the 18th Health Region of Paraná State. Vaginal and anorectal samples of each woman were plated on sheep blood agar, and in HPTH and Todd-Hewitt enrichment broths. Results Of the 496 pregnant women, 141 (28.4%) were positive for GBS based on the combination of the three culture media with vaginal and anorectal samples. The prevalence was 23.7% for vaginal samples and 21.9% for anorectal ones. Among the variables analyzed in this study, only urinary infection was a significant factor (0.026) associated with GBS colonization in women. Conclusions Based on these results, health units should performs universal screening of pregnant women and hospitals should provide adequate prophylaxis, when indicated

T Helper 1–Inducing Adjuvant Protects against Experimental Paracoccidioidomycosis

Immunostimulatory therapy is a promising approach to improving the treatment of systemic fungal infections such as paracoccidioidomycosis (PCM), whose drug therapy is usually prolonged and associated with toxic side effects and relapses. The current study was undertaken to determine if the injection of a T helper (Th) 1–stimulating adjuvant in P. brasiliensis–infected mice could have a beneficial effect on the course of experimental PCM. For this purpose, mice were infected and treated with complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA), a well-established Th1 experimental inductor, or incomplete Freund's adjuvant (IFA - control group) on day 20 postinfection. Four weeks after treatment, the CFA-treated mice presented a mild infection in the lungs characterized by absence of epithelioid cell granulomas and yeast cells, whereas the control mice presented multiple sites of focal epithelioid granulomas with lymphomonocytic halos circumscribing a high number of viable and nonviable yeast cells. In addition, CFA administration induced a 2.4 log reduction (>99%) in the fungal burden when compared to the control group, and led to an improvement of immune response, reversing the immunosuppression observed in the control group. The immunotherapy with Th1-inducing adjuvant, approved to be used in humans, might be a valuable tool in the treatment of PCM and potentially useful to improve the clinical cure rate in humans

Reflexões sobre a pessoa e a profissão do professor na área da saúde

Este artigo deriva de um conjunto de ideias experimentadas por discentes do Programa de Pós-graduação em Medicina e Ciências da Saúde da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), em uma disciplina que procurou conhecer melhor o docente típico e suas atipias. O texto pretende auxiliar no entendimento de quem é o professor na área da saúde. Discute o sujeito e sua obra, para além do já conhecido modelo centrado na profissão da saúde que exerce e que procura ensinar. Antes de docente, o professor é uma pessoa. Como pessoa, precisa sentir-se estimada e estimar ao outro (aluno). Ao prosperar em seu trabalho, o docente tem compromissos para com o desenvolvimento intelectual e moral de seus alunos e o planejamento de ações para que exerça a percepção crítica da realidade. A relação ensino-aprendizagem com o educando deve favorecer a análise de valores necessários ao convívio social. Na área da saúde, é requisitado ao aluno aprender a fazer, sendo pouca importância referida ao aprender a conhecer, ao aprender a ser ou a viver em comunhão com os pares. É essencial ter a percepção de que o professor necessita, inicialmente, acolher a si próprio: entender quem é ele, como é e porque chegou ali. A construção da identidade profissional docente é um processo contínuo estabelecido pelo domínio de sua área de ensino, pelos conhecimentos pedagógicos voltados à aprendizagem dos alunos e experiência docente, além das relações sociais do cotidiano

SARS-CoV-2 introductions and early dynamics of the epidemic in Portugal

Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal was rapidly implemented by the National Institute of Health in the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, in collaboration with more than 50 laboratories distributed nationwide. Methods By applying recent phylodynamic models that allow integration of individual-based travel history, we reconstructed and characterized the spatio-temporal dynamics of SARSCoV-2 introductions and early dissemination in Portugal. Results We detected at least 277 independent SARS-CoV-2 introductions, mostly from European countries (namely the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland), which were consistent with the countries with the highest connectivity with Portugal. Although most introductions were estimated to have occurred during early March 2020, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 was silently circulating in Portugal throughout February, before the first cases were confirmed. Conclusions Here we conclude that the earlier implementation of measures could have minimized the number of introductions and subsequent virus expansion in Portugal. This study lays the foundation for genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal, and highlights the need for systematic and geographically-representative genomic surveillance.We gratefully acknowledge to Sara Hill and Nuno Faria (University of Oxford) and Joshua Quick and Nick Loman (University of Birmingham) for kindly providing us with the initial sets of Artic Network primers for NGS; Rafael Mamede (MRamirez team, IMM, Lisbon) for developing and sharing a bioinformatics script for sequence curation (https://github.com/rfm-targa/BioinfUtils); Philippe Lemey (KU Leuven) for providing guidance on the implementation of the phylodynamic models; Joshua L. Cherry (National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health) for providing guidance with the subsampling strategies; and all authors, originating and submitting laboratories who have contributed genome data on GISAID (https://www.gisaid.org/) on which part of this research is based. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the view of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government. This study is co-funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia and Agência de Investigação Clínica e Inovação Biomédica (234_596874175) on behalf of the Research 4 COVID-19 call. Some infrastructural resources used in this study come from the GenomePT project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022184), supported by COMPETE 2020 - Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), Lisboa Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Lisboa2020), Algarve Portugal Regional Operational Programme (CRESC Algarve2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio