Localisation vaginale de Mansonella perstans: à propos d’un cas au centre hospitalier universitaire de Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso

Mansonella perstans est une filaire dont les adultes sont à localisation péritonéale et les microfilaires à localisation sanguine, qui sévit principalement en Amérique Equatoriale et aux bords de rivières, de plages en Afrique tropicale humide. Sa transmission est assurée par la piqûre de culicoïdes. Nous rapportons le cas d’une patiente souffrant de prurit dans un contexte biologique d’hyperéosinophilie au cours d’un dépistage du cancer du col de l’utérus. Une microfilaire de Mansonella perstans a été observée sur son frottis cervico-vaginal mais aussi dans son sang. La patiente a été traitée avec succès par une prise unique combinée de 400 mg d’albendazole et d’ivermectine (150 μg/kg). La localisation cervico-vaginale de Mansonella perstans est atypique et exceptionnelle. Nous proposons une recherche systématique de microfilaires lors de frottis cervico-vaginaux des femmes souhaitant un dépistage du cancer du col de l’utérus au Centre Hospitalier de Bobo-Dioulasso pour déterminer la fréquence réelle de cette localisation atypique. Pan African Medical Journal 2012; 12:4

Entrepreneurial universities and regional innovation: matching smart specialisation strategies to regional needs?

Universities are expected to play a leading role in the smart specialisation strategy process. However, a gap between discourse and practice is marking the RIS3-related regional development programmes, which can be extended to the involvement of universities in the process. A mismatch can be speculated between the expectations towards universities’ roles in RIS3 implementation and actual practice, and its repercussions on a regional innovation ecosystem. This chapter addresses the extent to which the role played by universities in a region’s innovation and entrepreneurial practice aligns with the smart specialisation strategic outline. As an in-depth case-study of the University of Aveiro (Portugal), it draws on both quantitative and qualitative data, with an analysis of RIS3 approved projects in the Portuguese NUTS II Centro region, and interviews with key actors within the university and the regional administration. Through this, it weighs the contribution of entrepreneurial universities to the RIS3 goals, drawing lessons for public policy and discussing the future of RIS3. Structural Funds, University of Aveiro, Less-Developed Region, Public Policy, Higher Education, RIS3, Portugal, Centro, Policy Proces

Accuracy of protist diversity assessments: morphology compared with cloning and direct pyrosequencing of 18S rRNA genes and ITS regions using the conspicuous tintinnid ciliates as a case study

Deep-sequencing technologies are becoming nearly routine to describe microbial community composition in environmental samples. The 18S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) pyrosequencing has revealed a vast diversity of infrequent sequences, leading to the proposition of the existence of an extremely diverse microbial `rare biosphere'. Although rare microbes no doubt exist, critical views suggest that many rare sequences may actually be artifacts. However, information about how diversity revealed by molecular methods relates to that revealed by classical morphology approaches is practically nonexistent. To address this issue, we used different approaches to assess the diversity of tintinnid ciliates, a species-rich group in which species can be easily distinguished morphologically. We studied two Mediterranean marine samples with different patterns of tintinnid diversity. We estimated tintinnid diversity in these samples employing morphological observations and both classical cloning and sequencing and pyrosequencing of two different markers, the 18S rDNA and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions, applying a variety of computational approaches currently used to analyze pyrosequence reads. We found that both molecular approaches were efficient in detecting the tintinnid species observed by microscopy and revealed similar phylogenetic structures of the tintinnid community at the species level. However, depending on the method used to analyze the pyrosequencing results, we observed discrepancies with the morphology-based assessments up to several orders of magnitude. In several cases, the inferred number of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) largely exceeded the total number of tintinnid cells in the samples. Such inflation of the OTU numbers corresponded to `rare biosphere' taxa, composed largely of artifacts. Our results suggest that a careful and rigorous analysis of pyrosequencing data sets, including data denoising and sequence clustering with well-adjusted parameters, is necessary to accurately describe microbial biodiversity using this molecular approach. The ISME Journal (2013) 7, 244-255; doi: 10.1038/ismej.2012.106; published online 4 October 201