Public health and economic impact of vaccination with 7-valent pneumococcal vaccine (PCV7) in the context of the annual influenza epidemic and a severe influenza pandemic

Background: Influenza pandemic outbreaks occurred in the US in 1918, 1957, and 1968. Historical evidence suggests that the majority of influenza-related deaths during the 1918 US pandemic were attributable to bacterial pneumococcal infections. The 2009 novel influenza A (H1N1) outbreak highlights the importance of interventions that may mitigate the impact of a pandemic. Methods: A decision-analytic model was constructed to evaluate the impact of 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) on pneumococcal disease incidence and mortality during a typical influenza season (13/100) and a severe influenza pandemic (30/100). Outcomes were compared for current PCV7 vaccination practices vs. no vaccination. The model was estimated using published sources and includes indirect (herd) protection of non-vaccinated persons. Results: The model predicts that PCV7 vaccination in the US is cost saving for a normal influenza season, reducing pneumococcal-related costs by $1.6 billion. In a severe influenza pandemic, vaccination would save$7.3 billion in costs and prevent 512,000 cases of IPD, 719,000 cases of pneumonia, 62,000 IPD deaths, and 47,000 pneumonia deaths; 84% of deaths are prevented due to indirect (herd) protection in the unvaccinated. Conclusions: PCV7 vaccination is highly effective and cost saving in both normal and severe pandemic influenza seasons. Current infant vaccination practices may prevent >1 million pneumococcal-related deaths in a severe influenza pandemic, primarily due to herd protection

Approaches in biotechnological applications of natural polymers

Natural polymers, such as gums and mucilage, are biocompatible, cheap, easily available and non-toxic materials of native origin. These polymers are increasingly preferred over synthetic materials for industrial applications due to their intrinsic properties, as well as they are considered alternative sources of raw materials since they present characteristics of sustainability, biodegradability and biosafety. As definition, gums and mucilages are polysaccharides or complex carbohydrates consisting of one or more monosaccharides or their derivatives linked in bewildering variety of linkages and structures. Natural gums are considered polysaccharides naturally occurring in varieties of plant seeds and exudates, tree or shrub exudates, seaweed extracts, fungi, bacteria, and animal sources. Water-soluble gums, also known as hydrocolloids, are considered exudates and are pathological products; therefore, they do not form a part of cell wall. On the other hand, mucilages are part of cell and physiological products. It is important to highlight that gums represent the largest amounts of polymer materials derived from plants. Gums have enormously large and broad applications in both food and non-food industries, being commonly used as thickening, binding, emulsifying, suspending, stabilizing agents and matrices for drug release in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. In the food industry, their gelling properties and the ability to mold edible films and coatings are extensively studied. The use of gums depends on the intrinsic properties that they provide, often at costs below those of synthetic polymers. For upgrading the value of gums, they are being processed into various forms, including the most recent nanomaterials, for various biotechnological applications. Thus, the main natural polymers including galactomannans, cellulose, chitin, agar, carrageenan, alginate, cashew gum, pectin and starch, in addition to the current researches about them are reviewed in this article.. }To the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientfíico e Tecnológico (CNPq) for fellowships (LCBBC and MGCC) and the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nvíel Superior (CAPES) (PBSA). This study was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UID/BIO/04469/2013 unit, the Project RECI/BBB-EBI/0179/2012 (FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-027462) and COMPETE 2020 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006684) (JAT)

Use of the foot-and-mouth disease virus 2A peptide co-expression system to study intracellular protein trafficking in arabidopsis

Background: A tool for stoichiometric co-expression of effector and target proteins to study intracellular protein trafficking processes has been provided by the so called 2A peptide technology. In this system, the 16-20 amino acid 2A peptide from RNA viruses allows synthesis of multiple gene products from single transcripts. However, so far the use of the 2A technology in plant systems has been limited. Methodology/Principal Findings: The aim of this work was to assess the suitability of the 2A peptide technology to study the effects exerted by dominant mutant forms of three small GTPase proteins, RABD2a, SAR1, and ARF1 on intracellular protein trafficking in plant cells. Special emphasis was given to CAH1 protein from Arabidopsis, which is trafficking to the chloroplast via a poorly characterized endoplasmic reticulum-to-Golgi pathway. Dominant negative mutants for these GTPases were co-expressed with fluorescent marker proteins as polyproteins separated by a 20 residue self-cleaving 2A peptide. Cleavage efficiency analysis of the generated polyproteins showed that functionality of the 2A peptide was influenced by several factors. This enabled us to design constructs with greatly increased cleavage efficiency compared to previous studies. The dominant negative GTPase variants resulting from cleavage of these 2A peptide constructs were found to be stable and active, and were successfully used to study the inhibitory effect on trafficking of the N-glycosylated CAH1 protein through the endomembrane system. Conclusions/Significance: We demonstrate that the 2A peptide is a suitable tool when studying plant intracellular protein trafficking and that transient protoplast and in planta expression of mutant forms of SAR1 and RABD2a disrupts CAH1 trafficking. Similarly, expression of dominant ARF1 mutants also caused inhibition of CAH1 trafficking to a different extent. These results indicate that early trafficking of the plastid glycoprotein CAH1 depends on canonical vesicular transport mechanisms operating between the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi apparatus