Les valvulopathies cardiaques en milieu hospitalier à Lomé (Togo)

Introduction: notre étude a consisté en l'identification les principales valvulopathies retrouvées en milieu hospitalier à Lomé (Togo).Méthodes: il s'agit d'une étude rétrospective, transversale, multicentrique menée du 1er janvier 2006 au 31 décembre 2010 et portant sur lesdossiers de patients suivis dans le service de cardiologie du CHU Campus de Lomé. Résultats: du 1er janvier 2006 au 31 Décembre 2010,5412 patients ont été consulté dans le service de cardiologie du CHU Campus. Parmi eux, 241 (4,45%) présentaient une valvulopathie. On notait une prédominance féminine avec un sex-ratio H/F à 0,60. La moyenne d'âge était de 62,32 ans avec des extrêmes allant de 16 à 89 ans et un écart type de 14,27. Les antécédents le plus souvent retrouvés étaient l'hypertension artérielle (26,97%) et le diabète (8,29%). Parmi les motifs de consultations, les plus fréquents étaient la dyspnée (39,00%), les précordialgies (32,78%) et les palpitations (21,16%).A l'examen physique 30,70% des patients  présentaient des signes de d'insuffisance cardiaque. A l'échographie, on notait des atteintes d'une seule valve (77,17%), de 02 valves (17,42%) ou 03 valves (5,4%). L'insuffisance mitrale (56,84%) et l'insuffisance aortique (30,70%) ont été les valvulopathies les plus fréquemment retrouvées. La maladie mitrale a été notée chez 05 patients. Les principales étiologies étaient dégénératives et ischémiques.Conclusion: les valvulopathies sont relativement fréquentes à Lomé.  L'insuffisance cardiaque est leur principal mode de révélation. Les plusretrouvées sont l'insuffisance mitrale et aortique

Préface

Lorsqu’il nous a été proposé de rédiger la préface de cet ouvrage sur les sols en Afrique, nous avons tout de suite perçu non seulement l’intérêt de mettre en avant les conclusions de cette étude pour notre pays, mais surtout la portée de ce livre pour notre continent et pour le monde. Nul besoin de préciser que l’enjeu de la santé des sols n’est propre ni au Bénin, ni à l’Afrique, et que c’est en cela qu’il est du devoir de chacun d’agir à la fois pour préserver ce qui peut l’être et pour re..

Breakpoint structure of the Anopheles gambiae 2Rb chromosomal inversion

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Alternative arrangements of chromosome 2 inversions in <it>Anopheles gambiae </it>are important sources of population structure, and are associated with adaptation to environmental heterogeneity. The forces responsible for their origin and maintenance are incompletely understood. Molecular characterization of inversion breakpoints provides insight into how they arose, and provides the basis for development of molecular karyotyping methods useful in future studies.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Sequence comparison of regions near the cytological breakpoints of 2Rb allowed the molecular delineation of breakpoint boundaries. Comparisons were made between the standard 2R<it>+</it>^{<it>b </it>}arrangement in the <it>An. gambiae </it>PEST reference genome and the inverted 2R<it>b </it>arrangements in the <it>An. gambiae </it>M and S genome assemblies. Sequence differences between alternative 2R<it>b </it>arrangements were exploited in the design of a PCR diagnostic assay, which was evaluated against the known chromosomal banding pattern of laboratory colonies and field-collected samples from Mali and Cameroon.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The breakpoints of the 7.55 Mb 2R<it>b </it>inversion are flanked by extensive runs of the same short (72 bp) tandemly organized sequence, which was likely responsible for chromosomal breakage and rearrangement. Application of the molecular diagnostic assay suggested that 2R<it>b </it>has a single common origin in <it>An. gambiae </it>and its sibling species, <it>Anopheles arabiensis</it>, and also that the standard arrangement (2R<it>+</it>^<it>b</it>) may have arisen twice through breakpoint reuse. The molecular diagnostic was reliable when applied to laboratory colonies, but its accuracy was lower in natural populations.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The complex repetitive sequence flanking the 2R<it>b </it>breakpoint region may be prone to structural and sequence-level instability. The 2R<it>b </it>molecular diagnostic has immediate application in studies based on laboratory colonies, but its usefulness in natural populations awaits development of complementary molecular tools.</p

Case study of Daga-Birame CSV for CCAFS ISP11/6.1.2 – Senegal

Senegal, with 196,712 km2 land area, is located at the extreme west of the African continent (Longitudes 11°21W - 17°32N and Latitudes 12°8N - 16°41N). The country’s soils are in general of low fertility, fragile and very susceptible to wind and water erosion. The climate is of Sudano-Sahelian type characterized by alternating dry season (November to May) and rainy season (June to October). The 700 km coastline brings climatic differences between coastal areas and inland zones. Rainfall amount follows a latitudinal variation going from 300 mm in the north semi-desertic areas to 1200 mm in the south. Senegal is divided into 7 agro-ecological zones for management perspectives: River Valley, Niayes, Groundnut Basin (North and South), Silvo-Pastoral zone, Eastern Senegal and Upper Casamance, Lower Casamance (CIAT-BFS/USAID, 2016). The country’s economy is mainly driven by crop and livestock production contributing 17% of the GDP and employing about 70% of the population (NAPA, Republic of Senegal 2006). Like other sub-Saharan African countries, Senegal faces food insecurity as a consequence of climate variability and change combined with other global changes (Zougmoré et al., 2015)

A Multidisciplinary Hyper-Modeling Scheme in Personalized In Silico Oncology: Coupling Cell Kinetics with Metabolism, Signaling Networks, and Biomechanics as Plug-In Component Models of a Cancer Digital Twin.

The massive amount of human biological, imaging, and clinical data produced by multiple and diverse sources necessitates integrative modeling approaches able to summarize all this information into answers to specific clinical questions. In this paper, we present a hypermodeling scheme able to combine models of diverse cancer aspects regardless of their underlying method or scale. Describing tissue-scale cancer cell proliferation, biomechanical tumor growth, nutrient transport, genomic-scale aberrant cancer cell metabolism, and cell-signaling pathways that regulate the cellular response to therapy, the hypermodel integrates mutation, miRNA expression, imaging, and clinical data. The constituting hypomodels, as well as their orchestration and links, are described. Two specific cancer types, Wilms tumor (nephroblastoma) and non-small cell lung cancer, are addressed as proof-of-concept study cases. Personalized simulations of the actual anatomy of a patient have been conducted. The hypermodel has also been applied to predict tumor control after radiotherapy and the relationship between tumor proliferative activity and response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Our innovative hypermodel holds promise as a digital twin-based clinical decision support system and as the core of future in silico trial platforms, although additional retrospective adaptation and validation are necessary

A Multidisciplinary Hyper-Modeling Scheme in Personalized In Silico Oncology: Coupling Cell Kinetics with Metabolism, Signaling Networks, and Biomechanics as Plug-In Component Models of a Cancer Digital Twin

The massive amount of human biological, imaging, and clinical data produced by multiple and diverse sources necessitates integrative modeling approaches able to summarize all this information into answers to specific clinical questions. In this paper, we present a hypermodeling scheme able to combine models of diverse cancer aspects regardless of their underlying method or scale. Describing tissue-scale cancer cell proliferation, biomechanical tumor growth, nutrient transport, genomic-scale aberrant cancer cell metabolism, and cell-signaling pathways that regulate the cellular response to therapy, the hypermodel integrates mutation, miRNA expression, imaging, and clinical data. The constituting hypomodels, as well as their orchestration and links, are described. Two specific cancer types, Wilms tumor (nephroblastoma) and non-small cell lung cancer, are addressed as proof-of-concept study cases. Personalized simulations of the actual anatomy of a patient have been conducted. The hypermodel has also been applied to predict tumor control after radiotherapy and the relationship between tumor proliferative activity and response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Our innovative hypermodel holds promise as a digital twin-based clinical decision support system and as the core of future in silico trial platforms, although additional retrospective adaptation and validation are necessary

Food quality profile of pounded yam and implications for yam breeding

Open Access ArticleBACKGROUND Assessment of the key preferred quality traits in pounded yam, a popularly consumed yam food product in West Africa, is often done through sensory evaluation. Such assessment is time-consuming and results may be biased. Therefore, there is a need to develop objective, high-throughput methods to predict the quality of consumer-preferred traits in pounded yam. This study focused on how key quality traits in pounded yam proposed to yam breeders were determined, measured by biophysical and biochemical methods, in order to shorten the breeding selection cycle through adoption of these methods by breeders. RESULTS Consumer tests and sensory quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) validated that preferred priority quality traits in pounded yam were related to textural quality (smooth, stretchable, moldable, slightly sticky and moderately hard) and color (white, cream or light yellow). There were significant correlations between sensory textural quality attributes cohesiveness/moldability, hardness, and adhesiveness/stickiness, with textural quality measurements from instrumental texture profile analysis (TPA). Color measurement parameters (L*, a*, and b*) with chromameter agreed with that of sensory evaluation and can replace the sensory panel approach. The smoothness (R2 = 1.00), stickiness (R2 = 1.00), stretchability (R2 = 1.00), hardness (R2 = 0.99), and moldability (R2 = 0.53) of pounded yam samples can be predicted by the starch, amylose, and protein contents of yam tubers estimated by near-infrared spectroscopy. CONCLUSION TPA and Hunter colorimeter can be used as medium-high throughput methods to evaluate the textural quality and color of pounded yam in place of the sensory panelists

A multidisciplinary hyper-modeling scheme in personalized in silico oncology : coupling cell kinetics with metabolism, signaling networks, and biomechanics as plug-in component models of a cancer digital twin

The massive amount of human biological, imaging, and clinical data produced by multiple and diverse sources necessitates integrative modeling approaches able to summarize all this information into answers to specific clinical questions. In this paper, we present a hypermodeling scheme able to combine models of diverse cancer aspects regardless of their underlying method or scale. Describing tissue-scale cancer cell proliferation, biomechanical tumor growth, nutrient transport, genomic-scale aberrant cancer cell metabolism, and cell-signaling pathways that regulate the cellular response to therapy, the hypermodel integrates mutation, miRNA expression, imaging, and clinical data. The constituting hypomodels, as well as their orchestration and links, are described. Two specific cancer types, Wilms tumor (nephroblastoma) and non-small cell lung cancer, are addressed as proof-of-concept study cases. Personalized simulations of the actual anatomy of a patient have been conducted. The hypermodel has also been applied to predict tumor control after radiotherapy and the relationship between tumor proliferative activity and response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Our innovative hypermodel holds promise as a digital twin-based clinical decision support system and as the core of future in silico trial platforms, although additional retrospective adaptation and validation are necessary

Windborne long-distance migration of malaria mosquitoes in the Sahel

Over the past two decades efforts to control malaria have halved the number of cases globally, yet burdens remain high in much of Africa and the elimination of malaria has not been achieved even in areas where extreme reductions have been sustained, such as South Africa1,2. Studies seeking to understand the paradoxical persistence of malaria in areas in which surface water is absent for 3–8 months of the year have suggested that some species of Anopheles mosquito use long-distance migration3. Here we confirm this hypothesis through aerial sampling of mosquitoes at 40–290 m above ground level and provide—to our knowledge—the first evidence of windborne migration of African malaria vectors, and consequently of the pathogens that they transmit. Ten species, including the primary malaria vector Anopheles coluzzii, were identified among 235 anopheline mosquitoes that were captured during 617 nocturnal aerial collections in the Sahel of Mali. Notably, females accounted for more than 80% of all of the mosquitoes that we collected. Of these, 90% had taken a blood meal before their migration, which implies that pathogens are probably transported over long distances by migrating females. The likelihood of capturing Anopheles species increased with altitude (the height of the sampling panel above ground level) and during the wet seasons, but variation between years and localities was minimal. Simulated trajectories of mosquito flights indicated that there would be mean nightly displacements of up to 300 km for 9-h flight durations. Annually, the estimated numbers of mosquitoes at altitude that cross a 100-km line perpendicular to the prevailing wind direction included 81,000 Anopheles gambiae sensu stricto, 6 million A. coluzzii and 44 million Anopheles squamosus. These results provide compelling evidence that millions of malaria vectors that have previously fed on blood frequently migrate over hundreds of kilometres, and thus almost certainly spread malaria over these distances. The successful elimination of malaria may therefore depend on whether the sources of migrant vectors can be identified and controlled

Diversity, dynamics, direction, and magnitude of high-altitude migrating insects in the Sahel

Long-distance migration of insects impacts food security, public health, and conservation–issues that are especially significant in Africa. Windborne migration is a key strategy enabling exploitation of ephemeral havens such as the Sahel, however, its knowledge remains sparse. In this first cross-season investigation (3 years) of the aerial fauna over Africa, we sampled insects flying 40–290 m above ground in Mali, using nets mounted on tethered helium-filled balloons. Nearly half a million insects were caught, representing at least 100 families from thirteen orders. Control nets confirmed that the insects were captured at altitude. Thirteen ecologically and phylogenetically diverse species were studied in detail. Migration of all species peaked during the wet season every year across localities, suggesting regular migrations. Species differed in flight altitude, seasonality, and associated weather conditions. All taxa exhibited frequent flights on southerly winds, accounting for the recolonization of the Sahel from southern source populations. “Return” southward movement occurred in most taxa. Estimates of the seasonal number of migrants per species crossing Mali at latitude 14°N were in the trillions, and the nightly distances traversed reached hundreds of kilometers. The magnitude and diversity of windborne insect migration highlight its importance and impacts on Sahelian and neighboring ecosystems