Evaluation of sexual history-based screening of anatomic sites for chlamydia trachomatis and neisseria gonorrhoeae infection in men having sex with men in routine practice

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Sexually transmitted infection (STI) screening programmes are implemented in many countries to decrease burden of STI and to improve sexual health. Screening for <it>Chlamydia trachomatis </it>and <it>Neisseria gonorrhoeae </it>has a prominent role in these protocols. Most of the screening programmes concerning men having sex with men (MSM) are based on opportunistic urethral testing. In The Netherlands, a history-based approach is used. The aim of this study is to evaluate the protocol of screening anatomic sites for <it>C. trachomatis </it>and <it>N. gonorrhoeae </it>infection based on sexual history in MSM in routine practice in The Netherlands.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>All MSM visiting the clinic for STI in The Hague are routinely asked about their sexual practice during consulting. As per protocol, tests for urogenital, oropharyngeal and anorectal infection are obtained based on reported site(s) of sexual contact. All consultations are entered into a database as part of the national STI monitoring system. Data of an 18 months period were retrieved from this database and analysed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 1455 consultations in MSM were registered during the study period. The prevalence of <it>C. trachomatis </it>and <it>N. gonorrhoeae </it>per anatomic site was: urethral infection 4.0% respectively and 2.8%, oropharynx 1.5% and 4.2%, and anorectum 8.2% and 6.0%. The majority of chlamydia cases (72%) involved a single anatomic site, which was especially manifest for anorectal infections (79%), while 42% of gonorrhoea cases were single site. Twenty-six percent of MSM with anorectal chlamydia and 17% with anorectal gonorrhoea reported symptoms of proctitis; none of the oropharyngeal infections were symptomatic. Most cases of anorectal infection (83%) and oropharyngeal infection (100%) would have remained undiagnosed with a symptom-based protocol.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The current strategy of sexual-history based screening of multiple anatomic sites for chlamydia and gonorrhoea in MSM is a useful and valid guideline which is to be preferred over a symptom-based screening protocol.</p

Search for rare quark-annihilation decays, B --> Ds(*) Phi

We report on searches for B- --> Ds- Phi and B- --> Ds*- Phi. In the context of the Standard Model, these decays are expected to be highly suppressed since they proceed through annihilation of the b and u-bar quarks in the B- meson. Our results are based on 234 million Upsilon(4S) --> B Bbar decays collected with the BABAR detector at SLAC. We find no evidence for these decays, and we set Bayesian 90% confidence level upper limits on the branching fractions BF(B- --> Ds- Phi) Ds*- Phi)<1.2x10^(-5). These results are consistent with Standard Model expectations.Comment: 8 pages, 3 postscript figues, submitted to Phys. Rev. D (Rapid Communications

Study of Bc+B_c^+ decays to the K+K−π+K^+K^-\pi^+ final state and evidence for the decay Bc+→χc0π+B_c^+\to\chi_{c0}\pi^+

A study of $B_c^+\to K^+K^-\pi^+$ decays is performed for the first time using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.0 $\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ collected by the LHCb experiment in $pp$ collisions at centre-of-mass energies of $7$ and $8$ TeV. Evidence for the decay $B_c^+\to\chi_{c0}(\to K^+K^-)\pi^+$ is reported with a significance of 4.0 standard deviations, resulting in the measurement of $\frac{\sigma(B_c^+)}{\sigma(B^+)}\times\mathcal{B}(B_c^+\to\chi_{c0}\pi^+)$ to be $(9.8^{+3.4}_{-3.0}(\mathrm{stat})\pm 0.8(\mathrm{syst}))\times 10^{-6}$. Here $\mathcal{B}$ denotes a branching fraction while $\sigma(B_c^+)$ and $\sigma(B^+)$ are the production cross-sections for $B_c^+$ and $B^+$ mesons. An indication of $\bar b c$ weak annihilation is found for the region $m(K^-\pi^+)<1.834\mathrm{\,Ge\kern -0.1em V\!/}c^2$, with a significance of 2.4 standard deviations.Comment: All figures and tables, along with any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://lhcbproject.web.cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/LHCbProjectPublic/LHCb-PAPER-2016-022.html, link to supplemental material inserted in the reference

A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons

Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots for b/w printin

The Role of Practitioner Resilience and Mindfulness in Effective Practice: A Practice-Based Feasibility Study.

A growing body of literature attests to the existence of therapist effects with little explanation of this phenomenon. This study therefore investigated the role of resilience and mindfulness as factors related to practitioner wellbeing and associated effective practice. Data comprised practitioners (n = 37) and their patient outcome data (n = 4980) conducted within a stepped care model of service delivery. Analyses employed benchmarking and multilevel modeling to identify more and less effective practitioners via yoking of therapist factors and nested patient outcomes. A therapist effect of 6.7 % was identified based on patient depression (PHQ-9) outcome scores. More effective practitioners compared to less effective practitioners displayed significantly higher levels of mindfulness as well as resilience and mindfulness combined. Implications for policy, research and practice are discussed

Induction of Cellular Senescence by Doxorubicin Is Associated with Upregulated miR-375 and Induction of Autophagy in K562 Cells

BACKGROUND: Cellular senescence is a specialized form of growth arrest that is generally irreversible. Upregulated p16, p53, and p21 expression and silencing of E2F target genes have been characterized to promote the establishment of senescence. It can be further aided by the transcriptional repression of proliferation-associated genes by the action of HP1γ, HMGA, and DNMT proteins to produce a repressive chromatin environment. Therefore, senescence has been suggested to functions as a natural brake for tumor development and plays a critical role in tumor suppression and aging. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: An in vitro senescence model has been established by using K562 cells treated with 50 nM doxorubicin (DOX). Since p53 and p16 are homozygously deleted in the K562 cells, the DOX-induced senescence in K562 cells ought to be independent of p53 and p16-pRb pathways. Indeed, no change in the expression of the typical senescence-associated premalignant cell markers in the DOX-induced senescent K562 cells was found. MicroRNA profiling revealed upregulated miR-375 in DOX-induced senescent K562 cells. Treatment with miR-375 inhibitor was able to reverse the proliferation ability suppressed by DOX (p<0.05) and overexpression of miR-375 suppressed the normal proliferation of K562 cells. Upregulated miR-375 expression was associated with downregulated expression of 14-3-3zeta and SP1 genes. Autophagy was also investigated since DOX treatment was able to induce cells entering senescence and eventually lead to cell death. Among the 24 human autophagy-related genes examined, a 12-fold increase of ATG9B at day 4 and a 20-fold increase of ATG18 at day 2 after DOX treatment were noted. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study has demonstrated that in the absence of p53 and p16, the induction of senescence by DOX was associated with upregulation of miR-375 and autophagy initiation. The anti-proliferative function of miR-375 is possibly exerted, at least in part, by targeting 14-3-3zeta and SP1 genes

Does the early frog catch the worm? Disentangling potential drivers of a parasite age–intensity relationship in tadpoles

The manner in which parasite intensity and aggregation varies with host age can provide insights into parasite dynamics and help identify potential means of controlling infections in humans and wildlife. A significant challenge is to distinguish among competing mechanistic hypotheses for the relationship between age and parasite intensity or aggregation. Because different mechanisms can generate similar relationships, testing among competing hypotheses can be difficult, particularly in wildlife hosts, and often requires a combination of experimental and model fitting approaches. We used field data, experiments, and model fitting to distinguish among ten plausible drivers of a curvilinear age–intensity relationship and increasing aggregation with host age for echinostome trematode infections of green frogs. We found little support for most of these proposed drivers but did find that the parsimonious explanation for the observed age–intensity relationship was seasonal exposure to echinostomes. The parsimonious explanation for the aggregated distribution of parasites in this host population was heterogeneity in exposure. A predictive model incorporating seasonal exposure indicated that tadpoles hatching early or late in the breeding season should have lower trematode burdens at metamorphosis, particularly with simulated warmer climates. Application of this multi-pronged approach (field surveys, lab experiments, and modeling) to additional parasite–host systems could lead to discovery of general patterns in the drivers of parasite age–intensity and age–distribution relationships

Mechanism of cellular rejection in transplantation

The explosion of new discoveries in the field of immunology has provided new insights into mechanisms that promote an immune response directed against a transplanted organ. Central to the allograft response are T lymphocytes. This review summarizes the current literature on allorecognition, costimulation, memory T cells, T cell migration, and their role in both acute and chronic graft destruction. An in depth understanding of the cellular mechanisms that result in both acute and chronic allograft rejection will provide new strategies and targeted therapeutics capable of inducing long-lasting, allograft-specific tolerance

Hemolymph microbiome of Pacific oysters in response to temperature, temperature stress and infection

Microbiota provide their hosts with a range of beneficial services, including defense from external pathogens. However, host-associated microbial communities themselves can act as a source of opportunistic pathogens depending on the environment. Marine poikilotherms and their microbiota are strongly influenced by temperature, but experimental studies exploring how temperature affects the interactions between both parties are rare. To assess the effects of temperature, temperature stress and infection on diversity, composition and dynamics of the hemolymph microbiota of Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas), we conducted an experiment in a fully-crossed, three-factorial design, in which the temperature acclimated oysters (8 or 22 °C) were exposed to temperature stress and to experimental challenge with a virulent Vibrio sp. Strain. We monitored oyster survival and repeatedly collected hemolymph of dead and alive animals to determine the microbiome composition by 16s rRNA gene amplicon pyrosequencing. We found that the microbial dynamics and composition of communities in healthy animals (including infection survivors) were significantly affected by temperature and temperature stress, but not by infection. The response was mediated by changes in the incidence and abundance of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and accompanied by little change at higher taxonomic levels, indicating dynamic stability of the hemolymph microbiome. Dead and moribund oysters, on the contrary, displayed signs of community structure disruption, characterized by very low diversity and proliferation of few OTUs. We can therefore link short-term responses of host-associated microbial communities to abiotic and biotic factors and assess the potential feedback between microbiota dynamics and host survival during disease

The Whereabouts of an Ancient Wanderer: Global Phylogeography of the Solitary Ascidian Styela plicata

Genetic tools have greatly aided in tracing the sources and colonization history of introduced species. However, recurrent introductions and repeated shuffling of populations may have blurred some of the genetic signals left by ancient introductions. Styela plicata is a solitary ascidian distributed worldwide. Although its origin remains unclear, this species is believed to have spread worldwide by travelling on ship's hulls. The goals of this study were to infer the genetic structure and global phylogeography of S. plicata and to look for present-day and historical genetic patterns. Two genetic markers were used: a fragment of the mitochondrial gene Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I (COI) and a fragment of the nuclear gene Adenine Nucleotide Transporter/ADP-ATP Translocase (ANT). A total of 368 individuals for COI and 315 for ANT were sequenced from 17 locations worldwide. The levels of gene diversity were moderate for COI to high for ANT. The Mediterranean populations showed the least diversity and allelic richness for both markers, while the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans had the highest gene and nucleotide diversities. Network and phylogenetic analyses with COI and ANT revealed two groups of alleles separated by 15 and 4 mutational steps, respectively. The existence of different lineages suggested an ancient population split. However, the geographic distributions of these groups did not show any consistent pattern, indicating different phylogeographic histories for each gene. Genetic divergence was significant for many population-pairs irrespective of the geographic distance among them. Stochastic introduction events are reflected in the uneven distribution of COI and ANT allele frequencies and groups among many populations. Our results confirmed that S. plicata has been present in all studied oceans for a long time, and that recurrent colonization events and occasional shuffling among populations have determined the actual genetic structure of this species