Schistosomiasis in Africa: Improving strategies for long-term and sustainable morbidity control

Schistosomiasis affects over 200 million people worldwide [1] and accounts for an estimated 1.9 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) annually [2], with 90% of the burden currently concentrated in Africa. The last decade has witnessed an extraordinary surge of advocacy and funding for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), including schistosomiasis. Large-scale schistosomiasis control is now implemented in 30 countries in Africa [1], funded primarily through support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department for International Development (DFID), private philanthropic funds from the END Fund and through GiveWell recommendations, and leveraging praziquantel donations from Merck KGaA. However, the number of people still requiring treatment remains daunting [1]. The aim of current public health strategies for schistosomiasis is to decrease morbidity through preventive chemotherapy (PC) (Fig 1) [3]. Periodic large-scale administration of the drug praziquantel focusing on the school-aged population and high-risk adults aims to reduce the prevalence and intensity of infection [4]

The impact of transposable element activity on therapeutically relevant human stem cells

Human stem cells harbor significant potential for basic and clinical translational research as well as regenerative medicine. Currently ~ 3000 adult and ~ 30 pluripotent stem cell-based, interventional clinical trials are ongoing worldwide, and numbers are increasing continuously. Although stem cells are promising cell sources to treat a wide range of human diseases, there are also concerns regarding potential risks associated with their clinical use, including genomic instability and tumorigenesis concerns. Thus, a deeper understanding of the factors and molecular mechanisms contributing to stem cell genome stability are a prerequisite to harnessing their therapeutic potential for degenerative diseases. Chemical and physical factors are known to influence the stability of stem cell genomes, together with random mutations and Copy Number Variants (CNVs) that accumulated in cultured human stem cells. Here we review the activity of endogenous transposable elements (TEs) in human multipotent and pluripotent stem cells, and the consequences of their mobility for genomic integrity and host gene expression. We describe transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms antagonizing the spread of TEs in the human genome, and highlight those that are more prevalent in multipotent and pluripotent stem cells. Notably, TEs do not only represent a source of mutations/CNVs in genomes, but are also often harnessed as tools to engineer the stem cell genome; thus, we also describe and discuss the most widely applied transposon-based tools and highlight the most relevant areas of their biomedical applications in stem cells. Taken together, this review will contribute to the assessment of the risk that endogenous TE activity and the application of genetically engineered TEs constitute for the biosafety of stem cells to be used for substitutive and regenerative cell therapiesS.R.H. and P.T.R. are funded by the Government of Spain (MINECO, RYC-2016- 21395 and SAF2015–71589-P [S.R.H.]; PEJ-2014-A-31985 and SAF2015–71589- P [P.T.R.]). GGS is supported by a grant from the Ministry of Health of the Federal Republic of Germany (FKZ2518FSB403)

Assessing Onchocerciasis Subcriticality from Pre-Intervention Cross-Sectional Surveys.

Elimination of an infectious disease requires subcritical transmission, or a reproductive number less than one, and can be assessed with cross-sectional surveys conducted by neglected tropical disease programs. Here, we assess the distribution of onchocerciasis prevalence taken from surveys across sub-Saharan Africa before the initiation of ivermectin in mass drug administrations. Pre-intervention nodular palpation cross-sectional surveys were available from 15 countries in the Expanded Special Project for Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (ESPEN) database. We determined whether the distribution of the prevalence over communities in an area was consistent with a geometric distribution, which previous studies have suggested indicates a subcritical disease. If not, we fitted a negative binominal distribution (hypothetically supercritical) or a mixture of two distributions: geometric (hypothetically subcritical) and Poisson (hypothetically supercritical). The overall distribution of community-level onchocerciasis prevalence estimates from the ESPEN dataset from 2005 to 2014 was not consistent with a geometric distribution. By contrast, data from several countries and parts of countries were consistent with the geometric distribution, for example, some areas within Nigeria and Angola. Even if the geometric distribution suggested pre-intervention subcriticality in more localized geographical areas, our model using pooled survey data of all geographic areas suggests that the entire pre-intervention prevalence does not fit a geometric distribution. Further work will be required to confirm the significance of a geometric distribution for onchocerciasis

LifeBots I: Building the software infrastructure for supporting lifelong technologies

Sevilla, 22-24 de noviembre 2017The goal of the LifeBots project is the study and development of long-life mechanisms that facilitate and improve the integration of robotics platforms in smart homes to support elder and handicapped people. Specifically the system aims to design, build and validate an assistive ecosystem formed by a person living in a smart home with a social robot as her main interface to a gentler habitat. Achieving this goal requires the use and integration of different technologies and research areas, but also the development of the mechanisms in charge of providing an unified, pro-active response to the user's needs. This paper describes some of the mechanisms implemented within the cognitive robotics architecture CORTEX that integrates deliberative and reactive agents through a common understanding and internalizing of the outer reality, which materializes in a shared representation derived from a formal graph grammar.This work has been partially funded by the European Union ECHORD++ project (FP7-ICT-601116) and the TIN2015-65686-C5 Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad projects and FEDER funds. Javier García is partially supported by the Comunidad de Madrid (Spain) funds under the project 2016-T2/TIC-1712. RoboLab is partially supported by the European project POPTEC EUROAGE 4E and by the Extremaduran Government under grant GR15120. We also want to acknowledge the Red de Agentes Físicos TIN2015-71693-REDT

Madurez para la lectoescritura en el primer ciclo de EGB

Proponer una adaptación curricular y didáctica para favorecer la madurez de las habilidades básicas, así como las intervenciones diagnósticas y terapéuticas necesarias tanto para un aprendizaje adaptado al individuo, como para garantizar el principio de coeducación. 286 alumnos de Preescolar, primero y segundo de EGB del Colegio Nacional Reina de la Paz (San Fernando, Cádiz). A) Diagnóstico y evaluación del nivel de madurez para clasificar a los alumnos por niveles, los cuales reciben una atención individualizada y enseñanza de recuperación, si es necesario, hasta alcanzar el nivel madurativo prefijado (momento en el que se reclasifica a los sujetos). B) Fase instrumental en la que se adquieren los objetivos de las áreas de expresión verbal, numérica y dinámica. La evaluación del rendimiento se realiza en las áreas de lectura y Matemáticas. Se consideraba el objetivo alcanzado si el 85 por ciento de los sujetos lo adquirían. A) ABC de Fhilo. Reversal test. Prueba de Dislexia I (EOS). Prueba de Psicomotricidad (EOS). Test de Raven. B) Pruebas de Lectura y de Matemáticas de Jesús Pérez González y prueba ad hoc de evaluación global de contenidos en el área de expresión numérica. Estadística descriptiva. Porcentajes. Pruebas de significación no paramétrica. En Preescolar se obtiene una banda de rendimiento entre el 70 y el 93. En este nivel la enseñanza de la lectoescritura depende de los mecanismos pedagógicos que se empleen, cuya pertinencia depende de la conjuncion de este factor con el nivel madurativo del niño. En el primer nivel, la exactitud lectora es el área que presenta más problemas. El rendimiento global en Lenguaje tiene una amplitud entre el 79 y el 96 por ciento; para Matemáticas estos valores son del 82 y 97,6 por ciento. En el segundo nivel es donde se presentan mayores problemas, siendo el área de comprensión la más deficitaria. La importancia del primer ciclo como medio para el aprendizaje básico para cursos posteriores. Concretamente recomiendan favorecer los mecanismos madurativos que facilitan la adquisición de la lectoescritura (dando mucha importancia a la psicomotricidad). También destacan la importancia del nivel Preescolar para suplir deficiencias educativas originadas en la familia y para lograr una coordinación entre escuela y familia.AndalucíaBiblioteca de Educación del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte; Calle San Agustín, 5 - 3 Planta; 28014 Madrid; Tel. +34917748000; Fax +34917748026; [email protected]

Timeline of global schistosomiasis control and elimination strategies (1950–present).

<p>p, prevalence; PZQ, praziquantel; SAC, school-age children; S.h., <i>Schistosoma haematobium</i>; S.m., <i>Schistosoma mansoni</i>; SCH, schistosomiasis; WHA, World Health Assembly; WHO, World Health Organization; yrs, years.</p