Pesticide Exposure Alters Follicle-Stimulating Hormone Levels in Mexican Agricultural Workers

Organophosphorous pesticides (OPs) are suspected of altering reproductive function by reducing brain acetylcholinesterase activity and monoamine levels, thus impairing hypothalamic and/or pituitary endocrine functions and gonadal processes. Our objective was to evaluate in a longitudinal study the association between OP exposure and serum levels of pituitary and sex hormones. Urinary OP metabolite levels were measured by gas–liquid chromatography, and serum pituitary and sex hormone levels by enzymatic immunoassay and radioimmunoassay in 64 men. A total of 147 urine and blood samples were analyzed for each parameter. More than 80% of the participants had at least one OP metabolite in their urine samples. The most frequent metabolite found was diethylthiophosphate (DETP; 55%), followed by diethylphosphate (DEP; 46%), dimethylthiophosphate (DMTP; 32%), and dimethyldithiophosphate (DMDTP; 31%). However, the metabolites detected at higher concentrations were DMTP, DEP, DMDTP, and dimethylphosphate. There was a high proportion of individuals with follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) concentrations outside the range of normality (48%). The average FSH serum levels were higher during the heavy pesticide spraying season. However, a multivariate analysis of data collected in all periods showed that serum FSH levels were negatively associated with urinary concentrations of both DMTP and DMDTP, whereas luteinizing hormone (LH) was negatively associated with DMTP. We observed no significant associations between estradiol or testosterone serum levels with OP metabolites. The hormonal disruption in agricultural workers presented here, together with results from experimental animal studies, suggests that OP exposure disrupts the hypothalamic–pituitary endocrine function and also indicates that FSH and LH are the hormones most affected

Design and Validation of an Augmented Reality System for Laparoscopic Surgery in a Real Environment

Purpose. This work presents the protocol carried out in the development and validation of an augmented reality system which was installed in an operating theatre to help surgeons with trocar placement during laparoscopic surgery. The purpose of this validation is to demonstrate the improvements that this system can provide to the field of medicine, particularly surgery. Method. Two experiments that were noninvasive for both the patient and the surgeon were designed. In one of these experiments the augmented reality system was used, the other one was the control experiment, and the system was not used. The type of operation selected for all cases was a cholecystectomy due to the low degree of complexity and complications before, during, and after the surgery. The technique used in the placement of trocars was the French technique, but the results can be extrapolated to any other technique and operation. Results and Conclusion. Four clinicians and ninety-six measurements obtained of twenty-four patients (randomly assigned in each experiment) were involved in these experiments.The final results show an improvement in accuracy and variability of 33% and 63%, respectively, in comparison to traditional methods, demonstrating that the use of an augmented reality system offers advantages for trocar placement in laparoscopic surgery.This work has been supported by Centro para el Desarrollo Tecnologico Industrial (CDTI) under the project Oncotic (IDI-20101153) and the Hospital Clinica Benidorm(HCB) and partially supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of Spain (TIN2010-20999-C04-01), the project Consolider-C (SEJ2006-14301/PSIC) and the "CIBER of Physiopathology of Obesity Nutrition, an initiative of ISCIII" Prometheus and Excellence Research Program (Generalitat Valenciana, Department of Education, 2008-157). The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Hospital Clinica Benidorm and to the Hospital Univeritari i Politecnic la Fe (especially the surgical team) for their participation and involvement in this work.López-Mir, F.; Naranjo Ornedo, V.; Fuertes Cebrián, JJ.; Alcañiz Raya, ML.; Bueno, J.; Pareja, E. (2013). Design and Validation of an Augmented Reality System for Laparoscopic Surgery in a Real Environment. BioMed Research International. 2013:1-12. https://doi.org/10.1155/2013/758491S1122013Rowe, C. K., Pierce, M. W., Tecci, K. C., Houck, C. S., Mandell, J., Retik, A. B., & Nguyen, H. T. (2012). A Comparative Direct Cost Analysis of Pediatric Urologic Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Surgery Versus Open Surgery: Could Robot-Assisted Surgery Be Less Expensive? Journal of Endourology, 26(7), 871-877. doi:10.1089/end.2011.0584Azuma, R. T. (1997). A Survey of Augmented Reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 6(4), 355-385. doi:10.1162/pres.1997.6.4.355Shuhaiber, J. H. (2004). Augmented Reality in Surgery. Archives of Surgery, 139(2), 170. doi:10.1001/archsurg.139.2.170Kersten-Oertel, M., Jannin, P., & Collins, D. L. (2012). DVV: A Taxonomy for Mixed Reality Visualization in Image Guided Surgery. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 18(2), 332-352. doi:10.1109/tvcg.2011.50Cannon, J. W., Stoll, J. A., Selha, S. D., Dupont, P. E., Howe, R. D., & Torchiana, D. F. (2003). Port placement planning in robot-assisted coronary artery bypass. IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, 19(5), 912-917. doi:10.1109/tra.2003.817502Adhami, L., & Coste-Manirei, E. (2003). Optimal planning for minimally invasive surgical robots. IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, 19(5), 854-863. doi:10.1109/tra.2003.817061Bichlmeier, C., Heining, S. M., Feuerstein, M., & Navab, N. (2009). The Virtual Mirror: A New Interaction Paradigm for Augmented Reality Environments. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 28(9), 1498-1510. doi:10.1109/tmi.2009.2018622Feuerstein, M., Mussack, T., Heining, S. M., & Navab, N. (2008). Intraoperative Laparoscope Augmentation for Port Placement and Resection Planning in Minimally Invasive Liver Resection. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 27(3), 355-369. doi:10.1109/tmi.2007.907327Abdominal and Laparoscopic Surgery. (2010). International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery, 5(S1), 122-130. doi:10.1007/s11548-010-0446-3Ferrari, V., Megali, G., Troia, E., Pietrabissa, A., & Mosca, F. (2009). A 3-D Mixed-Reality System for Stereoscopic Visualization of Medical Dataset. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, 56(11), 2627-2633. doi:10.1109/tbme.2009.2028013McSherry, C. K. (1989). Cholecystectomy: The gold standard. The American Journal of Surgery, 158(3), 174-178. doi:10.1016/0002-9610(89)90246-8Kum, C.-K., Eypasch, E., Aljaziri, A., & Troidl, H. (1996). Randomized comparison of pulmonary function after the ‘French’ and ‘American’ techniques of laparoscopic cholecystectomy. British Journal of Surgery, 83(7), 938-941. doi:10.1002/bjs.1800830716Mischkowski, R. A., Zinser, M. J., Kübler, A. C., Krug, B., Seifert, U., & Zöller, J. E. (2006). Application of an augmented reality tool for maxillary positioning in orthognathic surgery – A feasibility study. Journal of Cranio-Maxillofacial Surgery, 34(8), 478-483. doi:10.1016/j.jcms.2006.07.862Kawamata, T., Iseki, H., Shibasaki, T., & Hori, T. (2002). Endoscopic Augmented Reality Navigation System for Endonasal Transsphenoidal Surgery to Treat Pituitary Tumors: Technical Note. Neurosurgery, 50(6), 1393-1397. doi:10.1097/00006123-200206000-00038Vogt, S., Khamene, A., & Sauer, F. (2006). Reality Augmentation for Medical Procedures: System Architecture, Single Camera Marker Tracking, and System Evaluation. International Journal of Computer Vision, 70(2), 179-190. doi:10.1007/s11263-006-7938-1Nicolau, S., Soler, L., Mutter, D., & Marescaux, J. (2011). Augmented reality in laparoscopic surgical oncology. Surgical Oncology, 20(3), 189-201. doi:10.1016/j.suronc.2011.07.002Zhang, Z. (2000). A flexible new technique for camera calibration. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 22(11), 1330-1334. doi:10.1109/34.888718Martín-Gutiérrez, J., Luís Saorín, J., Contero, M., Alcañiz, M., Pérez-López, D. C., & Ortega, M. (2010). Design and validation of an augmented book for spatial abilities development in engineering students. Computers & Graphics, 34(1), 77-91. doi:10.1016/j.cag.2009.11.003Marquardt, D. W. (1963). An Algorithm for Least-Squares Estimation of Nonlinear Parameters. Journal of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 11(2), 431-441. doi:10.1137/011103

In Utero p,p′-DDE Exposure and Infant Neurodevelopment: A Perinatal Cohort in Mexico

BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that p,p′-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethene (DDE) affects neurodevelopment in infants, although a critical exposure window has not yet been identified. OBJECTIVES: Our goal was to assess the prenatal DDE exposure window and its effect on the psychomotor development index (PDI) and mental development index (MDI) during the first year of life. METHODS: We recruited 244 children whose pregnancies and deliveries were uncomplicated, and whose mothers were monitored throughout the pregnancy. Participating mothers were not occupationally exposed to DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) but were residents of a zone in Mexico with endemic malaria. We measured serum levels of DDE before pregnancy and during each trimester of the pregnancy. We evaluated PDI and MDI of the Bayley Scales for Infant Development (BSID-II), at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months of age. We adjusted for quality of the home environment and maternal intellectual coefficient (IQ). We used generalized mixed-effects models for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Third-trimester DDE level (7.8 ± 2.8 ppb) was significantly higher than the level at baseline, first, and second trimesters, but the differences never exceeded 20%. Only DDE levels during the first trimester of pregnancy were associated with a significant reduction in PDI (every doubled increase of DDE level reduced the PDI 0.5 points). DDE was not associated with MDI. CONCLUSIONS: A critical window of exposure to DDE in utero may be the first trimester of the pregnancy, and psychomotor development is a target of this compound. Residues of DDT metabolites may present a risk of developmental delay for years after termination of DDT use

Dietary flavonoids improve urinary arsenic elimination among Mexican women

Inorganic arsenic (iAs) exposure increases risk of several diseases, including cancer. Some nutrients such as flavonoids enhance glutathione activity, which in turn play a key role in iAs elimination. Our objective was to explore whether dietary non-soy flavonoids are associated with iAs metabolism. We hypothesized that the intake of flavonoids belonging to the following groups, flavan-3-ols, flavone, flavonol, flavanone, and anthocyanidin, is positively associated with urinary dimethylarsinic acid (DMA), which is the most soluble iAs metabolite excreted. We performed a cross-sectional study that included 1027 women living in an arsenic-contaminated area of northern Mexico. Flavonoid intake was estimated using a validated food frequency questionnaire. Concentration of urinary iAs and its metabolites (monomethylarsonic acid and DMA) were determined by high performance liquid chromatography ICP-MS. Results showed positive significant associations between DMA and the flavonoid groups flava-3-ols (beta= 0.0112) and flavones (beta= 0.0144), as well as the individual intake of apigenin (beta= 0.0115), luteolin (beta= 0.0138), and eriodictyol (beta= 0.0026). Our findings suggest that certain non-soy flavonoids may improve iAs elimination; however, there is still very limited information available regarding the consumption of flavonoids and iAs metabolism. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.CONACYT Fondo Sectorial de Investigacion en Salud y Seguridad Social [2005-2-14373, 2009-1-111384, 2010-1-140962, POCPN 2013-01-215464, FOSISS 272632]; National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health [MD 001452]12 month embargo; available online 21 April 2018.This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Follow-up study on lead exposure in children living in a smelter community in northern Mexico

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To study the changes of children lead exposure in the city of Torreon during the last five years, after environmental and public health interventions, using the timeline of lead in blood concentration as the biomarker of exposure and its relation to lead in soil concentrations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This follow-up study started in 2001 and consisted of 232 children living in nine neighborhoods in Torreon. Children were tested at 0, 6, 12 and 60 months. Lead in blood concentrations, Hemoglobin, Zinc-Protoporphyrin, anthropometric measures and socioeconomic status questionnaire was supplied to the parents.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Median and range of lead in blood concentrations obtained at 0, 6, 12, 60 months were: 10.12 μg/dl (1.9 - 43.8), 8.75 μg/dl (1.85 - 41.45), 8.4 μg/dl (1.7 - 35.8) and 4.4 μg/dl (1.3 - 30.3), respectively. The decrease of lead in blood levels was significantly related to ages 0, 6, 12 and 60 months of the follow-up study. The timeline of B-Pb was associated with the timeline of lead in soil concentrations.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>B-Pb levels have significantly decreased in the group of children studied. This could be explained by a) environmental interventions by authorities and the smelter companies, b) normal changes in hygienic habits as children age and c) lead redistribution from blood to hard tissues.</p

VIII Encuentro de Docentes e Investigadores en Historia del Diseño, la Arquitectura y la Ciudad

Acta de congresoLa conmemoración de los cien años de la Reforma Universitaria de 1918 se presentó como una ocasión propicia para debatir el rol de la historia, la teoría y la crítica en la formación y en la práctica profesional de diseñadores, arquitectos y urbanistas. En ese marco el VIII Encuentro de Docentes e Investigadores en Historia del Diseño, la Arquitectura y la Ciudad constituyó un espacio de intercambio y reflexión cuya realización ha sido posible gracias a la colaboración entre Facultades de Arquitectura, Urbanismo y Diseño de la Universidad Nacional y la Facultad de Arquitectura de la Universidad Católica de Córdoba, contando además con la activa participación de mayoría de las Facultades, Centros e Institutos de Historia de la Arquitectura del país y la región. Orientado en su convocatoria tanto a docentes como a estudiantes de Arquitectura y Diseño Industrial de todos los niveles de la FAUD-UNC promovió el debate de ideas a partir de experiencias concretas en instancias tales como mesas temáticas de carácter interdisciplinario, que adoptaron la modalidad de presentación de ponencias, entre otras actividades. En el ámbito de VIII Encuentro, desarrollado en la sede Ciudad Universitaria de Córdoba, se desplegaron numerosas posiciones sobre la enseñanza, la investigación y la formación en historia, teoría y crítica del diseño, la arquitectura y la ciudad; sumándose el aporte realizado a través de sus respectivas conferencias de Ana Clarisa Agüero, Bibiana Cicutti, Fernando Aliata y Alberto Petrina. El conjunto de ponencias que se publican en este Repositorio de la UNC son el resultado de dos intensas jornadas de exposiciones, cuyos contenidos han posibilitado actualizar viejos dilemas y promover nuevos debates. El evento recibió el apoyo de las autoridades de la FAUD-UNC, en especial de la Secretaría de Investigación y de la Biblioteca de nuestra casa, como así también de la Facultad de Arquitectura de la UCC; va para todos ellos un especial agradecimiento