The impact of antiretroviral therapy on malaria parasite transmission

Copyright © 2020 Azevedo, Mendes and Prudêncio. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Coendemicity between the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Plasmodium parasites, the causative agents of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and malaria, respectively, occurs in several regions around the world. Although the impact of the interaction between these two organisms is not well understood, it is thought that the outcome of either disease may be negatively influenced by coinfection. Therefore, it is important to understand how current first-line antiretroviral therapies (ART) might impact Plasmodium infection in these regions. Here, we describe the effect of 18 antiretroviral compounds and of first-line ART on the blood and sporogonic stages of Plasmodium berghei in vitro and in vivo. We show that the combination zidovudine + lamivudine + lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r), employed as first-line HIV treatment in the field, has a strong inhibitory activity on the sporogonic stages of P. berghei and that several non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTI) have a moderate effect on this stage of the parasite's life cycle. Our results expose the effect of current first-line ART on Plasmodium infection and identify potential alternative therapies for HIV/AIDS that might impact malaria transmission.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Inhibition of Plasmodium sporogonic stages by ivermectin and other avermectins

© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: The transmissible forms of Plasmodium parasites result from a process of sporogony that takes place inside their obligatory mosquito vector and culminates in the formation of mammalian-infective parasite forms. Ivermectin is a member of the avermectin family of endectocides, which has been proposed to inhibit malaria transmission due its insecticidal effect. However, it remains unclear whether ivermectin also exerts a direct action on the parasite's blood and transmission stages. Methods: We employed a rodent model of infection to assess the impact of ivermectin treatment on P. berghei asexual and sexual blood forms in vivo. We then made use of a newly established luminescence-based methodology to evaluate the activity of ivermectin and other avermectins against the sporogonic stages of P. berghei parasites in vitro independent of their role on mosquito physiology. Results: Our results show that whereas ivermectin does not affect the parasite's parasitemia, gametocytemia or exflagellation in the mammalian host, several members of the avermectin family of compounds exert a strong inhibitory effect on the generation and development of P. berghei oocysts. Conclusions: Our results shed light on the action of avermectins against Plasmodium transmission stages and highlight the potential of these compounds to help prevent the spread of malaria.This work was carried out with the support of grants PTDC-BBB-BMD-2695-2014 and 02/SAICT/2017/29550 from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal (FCT) to AMM and MP, respectively, and by FCT grant UID/BIM/50005/2019 (Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior (MCTES) through Fundos do Orçamento de Estado). RA was supported by FCT’s fellowship BD/131334/2017, AMM was supported by FCT’s fellowship SFRH/BPD/80693/2011, and MP was supported by FCT’s Investigador FCT 2013 and CEEC 2018 fellowships.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Ascertaining the degradation state of ceramic tiles : a preliminary non-destructive step in view of conservation treatments

Conserving the cultural heritage is a general concern and the use of non-destructive techniques to characterize ancient materials is important. Serious deterioration effects in environmentally exposed ancient glazed ceramic tiles arise from the development of micro-organisms (algae/fungi) within the pore system. Subsequent biodegradation processes are particularly harmful once the decorated glaze is damaged by exfoliation/detachment. Three case studies will be addressed: Portuguese polychrome decorated tiles from the interior of two churches (16th–17th century) and from the outdoor of a Palace (18th century). Small tile fragments were directly irradiated in a wavelength-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometer for glaze chemical characterization and subsequently irradiated in a powder diffractometer to assess the phase constitution of both glaze and ceramic body. Cleaning and conserving these ancient cultural artifacts involve a decontamination process applying innovative non-destructive techniques. The present work is intended as a contribution to diagnose the actual degradation state of ancient tiles in view of future decontamination actions using gamma radiation

Diagnosis of pathologies in ancient (seventeenth-eighteenth centuries) decorative blue-and-white ceramic tiles : Green stains in the glazes of a panel depicting Lisbon prior to the 1755 earthquake

Decorative panels of ceramic glazed tiles comprise a valuable cultural heritage in Mediterranean countries. Their preservation requires the development of a systematic scientific approach. Exposure to an open-air environment allows for a large span of deterioration effects. Successfully overcoming these effects demands a careful identification of involved degradation processes. Among these, the development of micro-organisms and concomitant glaze surface staining is a very common effect observed in panels manufactured centuries ago. This paper describes a study on the nature of green stains appearing at the surface of blue-and-white tile glazes from a large decorative panel with more than one thousand tiles, called Vista de Lisboa that depicts the city before the destruction caused by the 1755 earthquake. The characterization of green-stained blue-and-white tile glazes was performed using non-destructive X-ray techniques (diffraction and fluorescence spectrometry) by directly irradiating the surface of small tile fragments, complemented by a destructive scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observation of one fragment. Despite the green staining, analytical X-ray data showed that no deterioration had occurred irrespective of the blue or white color, while complementary SEM-EDX data provided chemical evidence of microorganism colonization at the stained glaze surface

No-cloning theorem in thermofield dynamics

We discuss the relation between the no-cloning theorem from quantum information and the doubling procedure used in the formalism of thermofield dynamics (TFD). We also discuss how to apply the no-cloning theorem in the context of thermofield states defined in TFD. Consequences associated to mixed states, von Neumann entropy and thermofield vacuum are also addressed.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

Luminiscence dating of burial 3 and the bell beaker pottery from La Pijotilla (Badajoz, Spain)

La Pijotilla es uno de los mayores asentamientos (80 Ha) del III milenio A.N.E. de la Península Ibérica, siendo considerado un lugar central dentro de la red de poblamiento de Tierra de Barros (comarca de Tierra de Barros, Badajoz). Desde los años 70 se han excavado el poblado y la necrópolis, destacando la tumba T3, excavada en la roca donde se realizaron 300 inhumaciones en capas sucesivas generando una estratigrafía amplia y que contenía un variado y cuantioso ajuar. En el poblado se ha recuperado una colección de fragmentos campaniformes sin contexto estratigráfico, junto a una gran diversidad de estilos decorativos pertenecientes a la última fases del III milenio ANE. El objetivo propuesto en este trabajo ha sido datar diferentes niveles de la tumba T3 y compararlas con otras dataciones C14; al igual que datar la cerámica campaniforme de superficie del poblado y compararla con dataciones absolutas procedentes de contextos habitacionalesLa Pijotilla, one of the largest settlements through out all Iberian Peninsula, and is considered a central place of Tierra de Barros Copper Age settlement network (Comarca de Tierra de Barros, Badajoz). During the field works that has been going on since the 70’s, the settlement and the necropolis area have been located. Several tombs have been excavated, standing out tomb 3, build on the rock with 300 buried individuals and a great richness of funerary objects alternated in several layers. During survey works in the settlement a large amount of decorated pottery from III millennium BC including a great number of Bell Beaker pottery, without a stratigraphic context, have been found. The focus in this work is to date different layers of T3 using luminescence techniques and compare them with old and new radiocarbon dates, as well as to date the survey-collected Bell Beaker pottery and compare them with the settlement radiocarbon datesPlan Nacional de Materiales MAT 2005-000790GRICES-CSIC 2005-PT003