One million dog vaccinations recorded on mHealth innovation used to direct teams in numerous rabies control campaigns

<div><p>Background</p><p>Canine transmitted rabies kills an estimated 59,000 people annually, despite proven methods for elimination through mass dog vaccination. Challenges in directing and monitoring numerous remote vaccination teams across large geographic areas remain a significant barrier to the up-scaling of focal vaccination programmes to sub-national and national level. Smartphone technology (mHealth) is increasingly being used to enhance the coordination and efficiency of public health initiatives in developing countries, however examples of successful scaling beyond pilot implementation are rare. This study describes a smartphone app and website platform, “Mission Rabies App”, used to co-ordinate rabies control activities at project sites in four continents to vaccinate over one million dogs.</p><p>Methods</p><p>Mission Rabies App made it possible to not only gather relevant campaign data from the field, but also to direct vaccination teams systematically in near real-time. The display of user-allocated boundaries on Google maps within data collection forms enabled a project manager to define each team’s region of work, assess their output and assign subsequent areas to progressively vaccinate across a geographic area. This ability to monitor work and react to a rapidly changing situation has the potential to improve efficiency and coverage achieved, compared to regular project management structures, as well as enhancing capacity for data review and analysis from remote areas. The ability to plot the location of every vaccine administered facilitated engagement with stakeholders through transparent reporting, and has the potential to motivate politicians to support such activities.</p><p>Results</p><p>Since the system launched in September 2014, over 1.5 million data entries have been made to record dog vaccinations, rabies education classes and field surveys in 16 countries. Use of the system has increased year-on-year with adoption for mass dog vaccination campaigns at the India state level in Goa and national level in Haiti.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>Innovative approaches to rapidly scale mass dog vaccination programmes in a sustained and systematic fashion are urgently needed to achieve the WHO, OIE and FAO goal to eliminate canine-transmitted human deaths by 2030. The Mission Rabies App is an mHealth innovation which greatly reduces the logistical and managerial barriers to implementing large scale rabies control activities. Free access to the platform aims to support pilot campaigns to better structure and report on proof-of-concept initiatives, clearly presenting outcomes and opportunities for expansion. The functionalities of the Mission Rabies App may also be beneficial to other infectious disease interventions.</p></div

Analysis combining correlated glaucoma traits identifies five new risk loci for open-angle glaucoma

Open-angle glaucoma (OAG) is a major cause of blindness worldwide. To identify new risk loci for OAG, we performed a genome-wide association study in 3,071 OAG cases and 6,750 unscreened controls, and meta-analysed the results with GWAS data for intraocular pressure (IOP) and optic disc parameters (the overall meta-analysis sample size varying between 32,000 to 48,000 participants), which are glaucoma-related traits. We identified and independently validated four novel genome-wide significant associations within or near MYOF and CYP26A1, LINC02052 and CRYGS, LMX1B, and LMO7 using single variant tests, one additional locus (C9) using gene-based tests, and two genetic pathways - "response to fluid shear stress" and "abnormal retina morphology" - in pathway-based tests. Interestingly, some of the new risk loci contribute to risk of other genetically-correlated eye diseases including myopia and age-related macular degeneration. To our knowledge, this study is the first integrative study to combine genetic data from OAG and its correlated traits to identify new risk variants and genetic pathways, highlighting the future potential of combining genetic data from genetically-correlated eye traits for the purpose of gene discovery and mappin

Author Correction: Cross-ancestry genome-wide association analysis of corneal thickness strengthens link between complex and Mendelian eye diseases

Emmanuelle Souzeau, who contributed to analysis of data, was inadvertently omitted from the author list in the originally published version of this Article. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article

Are we ready for genetic testing for primary open-angle glaucoma?

Following a dramatic reduction in the cost of genotyping technology in recent years, there have been significant advances in the understanding of the genetic basis of glaucoma. Glaucoma patients represent around a quarter of all outpatient activity in the UK hospital eye service and are a huge burden for the National Health Service. A potential benefit of genetic testing is personalised glaucoma management, allowing direction of our limited healthcare resources to the glaucoma patients who most need it. Our review aims to summarise recent discoveries in the field of glaucoma genetics and to discuss their potential clinical utility. While genome-wide association studies have now identified over ten genes associated with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG), individually, variants in these genes are not predictive of POAG in populations. There are data suggesting some of these POAG variants are associated with conversion from ocular hypertension to POAG and visual field progression among POAG patients. However, these studies have not been replicated yet and such genetic testing is not currently justified in clinical care. In contrast, genetic testing for inherited early-onset disease in relatives of POAG patients with a known genetic mutation is of clear benefit; this can support either regular review to commence early treatment when the disease develops, or discharge from ophthalmology services of relatives who do not carry the mutation. Genetic testing for POAG at a population level is not currently justified

Author Correction: Cross-ancestry genome-wide association analysis of corneal thickness strengthens link between complex and Mendelian eye diseases

Emmanuelle Souzeau, who contributed to analysis of data, was inadvertently omitted from the author list in the originally published version of this Article. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference

A large genome-wide association study of age-related macular degeneration highlights contributions of rare and common variants

© 2016 Nature America, Inc.Advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly, with limited therapeutic options. Here we report on a study of &gt;12 million variants, including 163,714 directly genotyped, mostly

A large genome-wide association study of age-related macular degeneration highlights contributions of rare and common variants

© 2016 Nature America, Inc.Advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly, with limited therapeutic options. Here we report on a study of &gt;12 million variants, including 163,714 directly genotyped, mostly