Principales cambios en la epidemiología de las enfermedades infecciosas en el mundo

ResumenEste trabajo revisa el concepto y el impacto de las nuevas enfermedades infecciosas y las razones para su emergencia; a partir de ahí, describe algunas estrategias para su control. Entre estas medidas se encuentra, en primer lugar. el fortalecimiento de los servicios de salud pública, como la vigilancia epidemiológica y los laboratorios de salud pública, que permitan identificar nuevos brotes y nuevas enfermedades infecciosas. En segundo lugar la difusión rápida de los conocimientos generados, hasta las personas encargadas del control de enfermedades. En tercer lugar, la promoción de la investigación en este campo y la formación de personal especializado. Dentro de la investigación es prioritario el desarrollo de nuevas vacunas, potencialmente útiles también para el control de las enfermedades crónicas, consideradas hasta ahora como no infecciosas (úlceras péptica, coronariopatías, etcétera). Por último, se recomienda un “nuevo abordaje epidemiológico”, que integre los aspectos médicos y sociales de las enfermedades. Este abordaje es además el que permite la necesaria colaboración con los profesionales de otros campos, como la inmunología, la microbiología, la clínica y las ciencias sociales.SummaryThis paper reviews the concept and impact of new infectious diseases and the reasons for their emergence; taking that as a start, it describes some strategies to control them. Among these measures we can find, firstly, the strengthening of public health services, such as epidemiological surveillance and public health laboratories, which allow us to identify new outbreaks and new infectious diseases. Secondly, the quick spread of the knowledge that is generated towards the people who are in charge of the control of diseases, and thirdly, the promotion of research in this field and the training of specialized staff. In the field of research, priority is given to the development of new vaccinations that are potentially useful for the control of chronic diseases which were considered until now as non-infectious (peptic ulcer, coronarypathies, etc.). Finally, a new epidemiological approach which integrates medical and social aspects of diseases is advised. Besides, this approach is what allows the necessary collaboration with professionals from other fields, such as immunology, microbiology, clinics and social sciences

Genetic Cross-Interaction between APOE and PRNP in Sporadic Alzheimer's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Diseases

Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) represent two distinct clinical entities belonging to a wider group, generically named as conformational disorders that share common pathophysiologic mechanisms. It is well-established that the APOE ε4 allele and homozygosity at polymorphic codon 129 in the PRNP gene are the major genetic risk factors for AD and human prion diseases, respectively. However, the roles of PRNP in AD, and APOE in CJD are controversial. In this work, we investigated for the first time, APOE and PRNP genotypes simultaneously in 474 AD and 175 sporadic CJD (sCJD) patients compared to a common control population of 335 subjects. Differences in genotype distribution between patients and control subjects were studied by logistic regression analysis using age and gender as covariates. The effect size of risk association and synergy factors were calculated using the logistic odds ratio estimates. Our data confirmed that the presence of APOE ε4 allele is associated with a higher risk of developing AD, while homozygosity at PRNP gene constitutes a risk for sCJD. Opposite, we found no association for PRNP with AD, nor for APOE with sCJD. Interestingly, when AD and sCJD patients were stratified according to their respective main risk genes (APOE for AD, and PRNP for sCJD), we found statistically significant associations for the other gene in those strata at higher previous risk. Synergy factor analysis showed a synergistic age-dependent interaction between APOE and PRNP in both AD (SF = 3.59, p = 0.027), and sCJD (SF = 7.26, p = 0.005). We propose that this statistical epistasis can partially explain divergent data from different association studies. Moreover, these results suggest that the genetic interaction between APOE and PRNP may have a biological correlate that is indicative of shared neurodegenerative pathways involved in AD and sCJD

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) - 2018 Summary Report

The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is a TeV-scale high-luminosity linear $e^+e^-$ collider under development at CERN. Following the CLIC conceptual design published in 2012, this report provides an overview of the CLIC project, its current status, and future developments. It presents the CLIC physics potential and reports on design, technology, and implementation aspects of the accelerator and the detector. CLIC is foreseen to be built and operated in stages, at centre-of-mass energies of 380 GeV, 1.5 TeV and 3 TeV, respectively. CLIC uses a two-beam acceleration scheme, in which 12 GHz accelerating structures are powered via a high-current drive beam. For the first stage, an alternative with X-band klystron powering is also considered. CLIC accelerator optimisation, technical developments and system tests have resulted in an increased energy efficiency (power around 170 MW) for the 380 GeV stage, together with a reduced cost estimate at the level of 6 billion CHF. The detector concept has been refined using improved software tools. Significant progress has been made on detector technology developments for the tracking and calorimetry systems. A wide range of CLIC physics studies has been conducted, both through full detector simulations and parametric studies, together providing a broad overview of the CLIC physics potential. Each of the three energy stages adds cornerstones of the full CLIC physics programme, such as Higgs width and couplings, top-quark properties, Higgs self-coupling, direct searches, and many precision electroweak measurements. The interpretation of the combined results gives crucial and accurate insight into new physics, largely complementary to LHC and HL-LHC. The construction of the first CLIC energy stage could start by 2026. First beams would be available by 2035, marking the beginning of a broad CLIC physics programme spanning 25-30 years