Genetic diversity of HLA system in four populations from Baja California, Mexico: Mexicali, La Paz, Tijuana and rural Baja California

We studied HLA class I (HLA-A, -B) and class II (HLA-DRB1, -DQB1) alleles by PCR-SSP based typing in 250 Mexicans from the states of Baja California Norte and Baja California Sur living in Mexicali (N = 100), La Paz (N = 75), Tijuana (N = 25) and rural communities (N = 50) to obtain information regarding allelic and haplotypic frequencies. The most frequent haplotypes for the Baja California region include nine Native American and five European haplotypes. Admixture estimates revealed that the main genetic components are European (50.45 ± 1.84% by ML; 42.03% of European haplotypes) and Native American (43.72 ± 2.36% by ML; 40.24% of Native American haplotypes), while the African genetic component was less apparent (5.83 ± 0.98% by ML; 9.36% of African haplotypes)

CIBERER : Spanish national network for research on rare diseases: A highly productive collaborative initiative

Altres ajuts: Instituto de Salud Carlos III (ISCIII); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación.CIBER (Center for Biomedical Network Research; Centro de Investigación Biomédica En Red) is a public national consortium created in 2006 under the umbrella of the Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III (ISCIII). This innovative research structure comprises 11 different specific areas dedicated to the main public health priorities in the National Health System. CIBERER, the thematic area of CIBER focused on rare diseases (RDs) currently consists of 75 research groups belonging to universities, research centers, and hospitals of the entire country. CIBERER's mission is to be a center prioritizing and favoring collaboration and cooperation between biomedical and clinical research groups, with special emphasis on the aspects of genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular research of RDs. This research is the basis for providing new tools for the diagnosis and therapy of low-prevalence diseases, in line with the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC) objectives, thus favoring translational research between the scientific environment of the laboratory and the clinical setting of health centers. In this article, we intend to review CIBERER's 15-year journey and summarize the main results obtained in terms of internationalization, scientific production, contributions toward the discovery of new therapies and novel genes associated to diseases, cooperation with patients' associations and many other topics related to RD research

Calidad de vida percibida y su relación con la práctica de actividad física en el ámbito laboral. Un estudio pilotoP

The aim of this study is to identify the correlation between perceived quality of life regarding health and the regular practice of physical exercise, in a group of public sector workers. Method: A total of 125 workers from the Seville Council Health Service completed the SF-36 version 2 AGUDA health survey, in order to rate their quality of life regarding health in the work sphere, along with a general question survey indicating the type and frequency of the physical activity they do. Results: In all parts of the survey the state of health falls within the average range, the highest scores being those of physical function and vitality. Conclusion: The workers who do no physical exercise have a worse perception of their health, at least compared with that of last year, while those who do regular physical activity score more positive results concerning their perception of their quality of life in terms of health.El objetivo del presente estudio trata de identificar la relación existente entre la calidad de vida percibida relacionada con la salud, y la práctica de actividad física realizada de manera habitual en un grupo de empleados públicos. Método. Un total de 125 trabajadores del Servicio de salud del Ayuntamiento de Sevilla cumplimentaron el cuestionario de salud SF-36 versión 2 AGUDA para determinar su calidad de vida relacionada con la salud en el ámbito laboral, así como un cuestionario de preguntas de carácter general indicando el tipo y frecuencia de actividad física que realizaban. Resultados. Para todas las dimensiones del cuestionario, el estado de salud está dentro del rango promedio, siendo las dimensiones de función física y vitalidad las que presentan una mejor puntuación. Conclusión. Los trabajadores que no realizan actividad física tienen una peor percepción de su salud o por lo menos comparada con la del año anterior, mientras que los que si realizan actividad física de manera regular presentan respuestas indicadoras de una percepción más positiva de su calidad de vida relacionada con su salu

Down syndrome as risk factor for respiratory syncytial virus hospitalization : A prospective multicenter epidemiological study

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection in childhood, particularly in premature infants, is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. To compare the hospitalization rates due to RSV infection and severity of disease between infants with and without Down syndrome (DS) born at term and without other associated risk factors for severe RSV infection. In a prospective multicentre epidemiological study, 93 infants were included in the DS cohort and 68 matched by sex and data of birth (±1 week) and were followed up to 1 year of age and during a complete RSV season. The hospitalization rate for all acute respiratory infection was significantly higher in the DS cohort than in the non-DS cohort (44.1% vs 7.7%, P<.0001). Hospitalizations due to RSV were significantly more frequent in the DH cohort than in the non-DS cohort (9.7% vs 1.5%, P=.03). RSV prophylaxis was recorded in 33 (35.5%) infants with DS. The rate of hospitalization according to presence or absence of RSV immunoprophylaxis was 3.0% vs 15%, respectively. Infants with DS showed a higher rate of hospitalization due to acute lower respiratory tract infection and RSV infection compared to non-DS infants. Including DS infants in recommendations for immunoprophylaxis of RSV disease should be considered

Sharing Plant Uses with Animals: Plants Used for Feeding and Curing Humans and Animals in the Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge Related to Biodiversity

Trabajo presentado en la 57th Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany (Cultural resilience and resource extraction: preserving plants & people of degraded ecosystems), celebrada en Pine Mountain (USA) del 5 al 9 de junio de 2016.Spain has a very rich and dynamic traditional ecological knowledge system that has suffered severe erosion over the last decades. This knowledge has been deeply influenced by a rich and diverse historical heritage that includes many centuries old documents from ancient cultures, some over 2000 years old. Spanish acute useful flora comprises around 3,000 species, most of them autochthonous. A team of more than 70 scientists from more than 30 universities and other research centres are developing the Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge. The inventory includes a database with information from over180 papers. The review of such papers showed that more than 2,300 plant species are used in human and animal food and medicine: 1,681 in human medicine, 1,295 in animal food, 953 in human food and 709 in veterinary medicine. Nearly 14% of the species (313) are shared in the four categories and a very important amount of species are used both for humans and animals: 35% of the species (800) are employed in animal food and medicine, 31% (710) in human food and medicine, 28% (650) in human and veterinary medicine and 27% (624) in animal and human food. This high percentage of overlap between human and animal uses may indicate that the observation of animal behaviour , specially feeding and selfmedication behaviours, might have given clues to humans on how to use food and medicinal plants[Lo1]. It also reinforces the idea that food and medicine represent a continuum not only for humans, but also for animals.Peer reviewe

Sustainability of traditional ecological knowledge: importance, distribution, endemicity and conservation of Spanish medicinal plants

Trabajo presentado en la 58th Annual Meeting of the Society for Economic Botany (Living in a global world: local knowledge ans sustainability), celebrada en Braganza (Portugal) del 4 al 9 de junio de 2017.-- IECTB authors: L Aceituno, R Acosta, A Alvarez, E Barroso, J Blanco, MA Bonet, L Calvet, E Carrio, R Cavero, U DAmbrosio , L Delgado, J Fajardo, I Fernandez-Ordonez, J Garcia, T Garnatje, JA Gonzalez, R Gonzalez-Tejero, A Gras, E Hernandez-Bermejo, E Laguna, JA Latorre, C. Lopez, MJ Macia, E Marcos, V Martinez, G Menendez, M Molina, R Morales, LM Munoz, C Obon, R Ontillera, M Parada, A Perdomo, I Perez, MP Puchades, V Reyes-Garcia, M Rigat, S Rios, D Rivera, R Rodriguez, O Rodriguez, R Roldan, L San Joaquin, FJ Tardio, JR Vallejo, J Valles, H Velasco and A Verde.More than 17,000 of the plant species of the world have been used as medicines. The Mediterranean basin, and specifically Spain, has a great floristic and ethnobotanical richness, comprising its useful flora around 3,000 plant species. This paper studies medicinal plants traditionally used in Spain in order to analyze the sustainability of their exploitation. Given that sustainability is related to the amount of the resource and its gathering pressure, its availability and cultural importance were analysed based on: the number of papers cited from a selection of over 180 papers, the number of 10x10 km UTM grid cells in which the plants were represented, the number of phytosociological inventories in which the presence of the plant has been registered, and searched on their current conservation status in European, national and regional legislations. The total number of wild or naturalized medicinal species in Spain reaches 1,393, 15% of them being endemic. A positive correlation was found among cultural importance and abundance (ρ=0.48) and among cultural importance and distribution (ρ=0.502), showing that abundant widely distributed species are those more commonly used. Most of the medicinal plants (72%) do not appear on the consulted regulations and do not have any legal protection or known threat and only 11 species are registered in any of the annexes of the European Habitats directive. While this study confirms that people tend to select as medicinal abundant and widely distributed species, many other criteria are used for selecting them.Peer reviewe

Universidad y sociedad: comunicación, integración y colaboración con empresas e instituciones públicas y organizaciones no lucrativas. Nuevos avances

Depto. de Teorías y Análisis de la ComunicaciónFac. de Ciencias de la InformaciónFALSEsubmitte