XVI Seminario sobre amibiasis 2009 y embo workshop: amebiasis, molecular approaches in an important but neglected disease

Amoebic liver abscess (ALA) is the most common extraintestinal manifestation of amoebiasis in South East Asian countries and Mexico. Diagnosis is based on clinical symptoms and signs; occurrence of space occupying lesion in liver detected by imaging techniques, positive amoebic serology and clinical response to antiamoebic therapy with metronidazole. The amoebic serological assay employed at Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (HUSM), Kelantan is the commercial indirect haemagglutination assay (IHA) kit which detects anti-Entamoeba histolytica antibodies in serum samples. During the study period from January 2005 till June 2006, there were 43 clinical or suspected cases of ALA. On admission, all patients presented with fever. Thirty nine of them had abdominal pain; 9 had history of passing loose stools; 42 presented with hepatomegaly while 15 had jaundice; and 37 presented with leucocytosis. Thirty three patients had liver abscesses in their right lobe, 6 with abscesses in the left lobe and 4 had abscesses in both lobes of the liver. The IHA test were positive (titer more than or equal to 1 :256) in 33 (76.7%) patients. Forty two of the patients were treated with intravenous metronidazole 500 mg every 8 hours and continued with oral metronidazole when the patients were discharged. In the amoebiasis endemic setting in Kelantan, interpretation of IHA results can be problematic due to the high background antibody levels Therefore, a simple, rapid, noninvasive test with high sensitivity and specificity for laboratory diagnosis of ALA is urgently needed

Purchase intention of Consumers from Melaka towards Mobile Advertising

Acceleration growth in the telecommunication technology especially in mobile devices has resulted to greater new opportunities to the marketing strategies. It thus has led to the current study on the purchase intention of consumers from Melaka towards mobile advertising. A survey was conducted with a set of self-administered questionnaire. A total of 250 respondents was recruited using convenience sampling. The results show that three out of five independent variables examined, namely credibility, irritation and incentive are significant. Informativeness and entertainment were found to have no impact on purchase intention. The regression model is able to explain 73.6% of the variation in consumers purchase intention. This study is able to provide information in relation to factors influencing purchase intention of consumer which has laid a basis in helping the mobile advertisers to develop better strategy of their advertisement

Understanding Customer Satisfaction of Internet Banking: A Case Study In Malacca

AbstractThe banking industry has been rapidly developing the use of Internet banking as an efficient and viable tool to create customer value. It is one of the popular services offered by the traditional banks to provide speedier and reliable services to online users. With the rapid development of computer technology as a commercial too Internet banking can be used to attract more customers to perform banking transactions in related banks. However, the main problem of Internet banking faced by the providers is that a large number of the banks’ customers are not willing to use the Internet banking services offered. This happened due to the services offered through Internet banking have yet to satisfy their customers. Customer satisfaction is an important factor to help banks to sustain competitive advantages. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to search and examine the factors which influence customer satisfaction towards Internet banking. The five factors which can influence customer satisfaction toward Internet banking include service quality, web design and content, security and privacy, convenience and speed. With the use of a questionnaire survey, 200 working adults participated in this study have provided valuable feedback and responses pertaining to the above factors that influence customers’ decision to do Internet Banking. The results of this research showed that web design and content, convenience and speed are closely linked to customer satisfaction toward Internet banking. Or … The results of this research showed that web design and content, convenience and speed are the top three factors that influence customer satisfaction toward Internet Banking

Comparison of IgG4 assays using whole parasite extract and BmR1 recombinant antigen in determining antibody prevalence in brugian filariasis

BACKGROUND: Brugia malayi is endemic in several Asian countries with the highest prevalence in Indonesia. Determination of prevalence of lymphatic filariasis by serology has been performed by various investigators using different kinds of antigen (either soluble worm antigen preparations or recombinant antigens). This investigation compared the data obtained from IgG4 assays using two different kinds of antigen in a study on prevalence of antibodies to B. malayi. METHODS: Serum samples from a transmigrant population and life long residents previously tested with IgG4 assay using soluble worm antigen (SWA-ELISA), were retested with an IgG4 assay that employs BmR1 recombinant antigen (BmR1 dipstick [Brugia Rapid™]). The results obtained with the two antigens were compared, using Pearson chi-square and McNemar test. RESULTS: There were similarities and differences in the results obtained using the two kinds of antigen (SWA and BmR1). Similarities included the observation that assays using both antigens demonstrated an increasing prevalence of IgG4 antibodies in the transmigrant population with increasing exposure to the infection, and by six years living in the area, antibody prevalence was similar to that of life-long residents. With regards to differences, of significance is the demonstration of similar antibody prevalence in adults and children by BmR1 dipstick whereas by SWA-ELISA the antibody prevalence in adults was higher than in children. CONCLUSIONS: Results and conclusions made from investigations of prevalence of anti-filarial IgG4 antibody in a population would be affected by the assay employed in the study

YBX1 gene silencing inhibits migratory and invasive potential via CORO1C in breast cancer in vitro

Non-coding genes that were differentially expressed following YB-1 silencing in MDA-MB-231 cells. (XLSX 10 kb

AP4 transcription factor binding site is a repressor element in ek2 promoter of human liver carcinoma cell line, HepG2

Ethanolamine kinase (EK) is the first enzyme in the Kennedy pathway for the biosynthesis of phosphatidylethanolamine. Although EK has been reported to be involved in phospholipid biosynthesis, carcinogenesis, cell growth, muscle development and sex determination during embryonic development, little is known about its transcriptional regulation by endogenous or exogenous signals. Human EK exists as EK1, EK2α and EK2β isoforms, encoded by two separate genes, named ek1 and ek2. Compared to ek1 gene, ek2 is expressed at a higher level in liver and EK2 isoforms also accept choline as substrate besides ethanolamine, which could contribute to liver carcinogenesis. The main aim of this study was to analyze and characterize the human ek2 promoter in cultured mammalian cells. Human ek2 (2011 bp) promoter was cloned into reporter vector, pGL4.10 [luc2] and the promoter activities were studied in human liver carcinoma (HepG2 cells). Sequence analyses showed that ek2 promoter contains numerous putative transcription factor binding sites including AP4 and it is devoid of a recognizable consensus TATA box but it contains a high number of guanine (G) and cytosine (C) nucleotides. PCR mutagenesis of three nucleotides at E-box motif of AP4 transcription binding site located between -293 and -276 of ek2 promoter was successfully performed to show that AP4 transcription factor binding site acts as a repressive element in the regulation of ek2 expression. AP4 upregulation has been implicated in bad prognosis of carcinoma, therefore the regulatory role of AP4 binding site reported in this study could be a link between ek2 and carcinogenesis. Although further studies need to be carried out to understand and to determine the repression mechanism of AP4 in ek2 promoter, the characterization and analysis of ek promoter performed in this study provide important understanding of its basal transcriptional regulation which would allow us to control ek expression levels in pathologic conditions that involve this gene

iHAP – integrated haplotype analysis pipeline for characterizing the haplotype structure of genes

BACKGROUND: The advent of genotype data from large-scale efforts that catalog the genetic variants of different populations have given rise to new avenues for multifactorial disease association studies. Recent work shows that genotype data from the International HapMap Project have a high degree of transferability to the wider population. This implies that the design of genotyping studies on local populations may be facilitated through inferences drawn from information contained in HapMap populations. RESULTS: To facilitate analysis of HapMap data for characterizing the haplotype structure of genes or any chromosomal regions, we have developed an integrated web-based resource, iHAP. In addition to incorporating genotype and haplotype data from the International HapMap Project and gene information from the UCSC Genome Browser Database, iHAP also provides capabilities for inferring haplotype blocks and selecting tag SNPs that are representative of haplotype patterns. These include block partitioning algorithms, block definitions, tag SNP definitions, as well as SNPs to be "force included" as tags. Based on the parameters defined at the input stage, iHAP performs on-the-fly analysis and displays the result graphically as a webpage. To facilitate analysis, intermediate and final result files can be downloaded. CONCLUSION: The iHAP resource, available at , provides a convenient yet flexible approach for the user community to analyze HapMap data and identify candidate targets for genotyping studies

Immunomodulation resulting of helminth infection could be an opportunity for immunization against tuberculosis and mucosal pathogens

Approximately, 10 million new tuberculosis (TB) cases were reported in 2020, of which 12% were among children (1). It is estimated that one-quarter of the world population (around 2 billion) is latently infected by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and 5-10% of these individuals will develop active TB (ATB) (1). Infections caused by soil-transmitted helminths (STH) and schistosomes affect about 1.5 billion and 250 million people, respectively, worldwide (2). Children and pregnant women are the population groups with the highest risk of infection by those parasites (3)

Field evaluation of a potential infection marker for Burgian filariasis

Western blot analyses were performed on 444 serum specimens : 40 sera from microfilaraemic individuals,10 sera from elephantiasis patients, 24 treated individuals, 50 sera from residents of endemic areas without anti-filarial IgG4 "antibodies (endemic normals), 20 sera from amicrofilaraemic individuals with high anti-filarial lgG4 antibodies, 200 sera from healthy city-dwellers (non-endemic samples) and 100 sera from soil-transmitted helminth infected individuals. Phast Electrophoresis System was used to electrophorese Brugia malayi soluble adult worm antigen on 10-15% SDS-PAGE gradient gels followed by electrophoretic transfer onto PVDF membranes. Membrane strips were then successively incubated with blocking solution, human sera and monoclonal anti-human IgG4 antibody-HRP ; with adequate washings done in between each incubation steps. Luminol chemiluminescence detection was then used to develop the blots. An antigenic band with the - MW of 37 kDa was found to be consistently present in the Western blots of all microfilaraemic sera, all amicrofilaraemic sera with high titres of anti-filarial IgG4 antibodies, some treated patients and some elephantiasis patients. The antigen did not occur in immunoblots of individuals with other helminthic infections, normal endemic individuals and city dwellers. Therefore the B. malayi antigen of- MW of 3'7 kDa demonstrated specific reactions with sera of B. malayi infected individuals and thus may be useful for diagnostic application