High prevalence of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) in São Paulo City, Brazil

Introduction: HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) are the subject of many studies, some of them reporting a prevalence of up to 50 percent. Objectives: To determine the prevalence and factors associated with HIV neurocognitive disorders (HAND) in a cohort of HIV-1-infected patients in São Paulo city, Brazil. Methodology: Descriptive cross-sectional study including 106 HIV-1-infected patients, employing direct interview and neuropsychological tests, applied by trained neuro-psychologists with expertise in the tests. Other, similar assessment tools we used were Brief Neurocognitive Questionnaire, International HIV Dementia Scale, Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Social Support Scale for People with HIV/Aids, Assessment of Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy Questionnaire, and a complex neuropsychological assessment. Results: We included 106 patients from May 2015 to April 2018. We found a high prevalence of HAND in our patients (45%), with 27.5% presenting asymptomatic neurological impairment (ANI) and 17.5% mild neurological dysfunction (MND); only one patient presented HIV-associated dementia (HAD) (0.9%). Women were more likely to have MND (52.9%) and the only case of HAD was also female. The high prevalence of neurocognitive disorders was independent of the immunological status, use of efavirenz, or virological control. Conclusions: This study may mirror the national and international scenarios, showing a high prevalence of HAND (45%) and the prevalence of some risk factors, in special among women

Development of Potential Multi-Target Inhibitors for Human Cholinesterases and Beta-Secretase 1: A Computational Approach

Alzheimer’s disease causes chronic neurodegeneration and is the leading cause of dementia in the world. The causes of this disease are not fully understood but seem to involve two essential cerebral pathways: cholinergic and amyloid. The simultaneous inhibition of AChE, BuChE, and BACE-1, essential enzymes involved in those pathways, is a promising therapeutic approach to treat the symptoms and, hopefully, also halt the disease progression. This study sought to identify triple enzymatic inhibitors based on stereo-electronic requirements deduced from molecular modeling of AChE, BuChE, and BACE-1 active sites. A pharmacophore model was built, displaying four hydrophobic centers, three hydrogen bond acceptors, and one positively charged nitrogen, and used to prioritize molecules found in virtual libraries. Compounds showing adequate overlapping rates with the pharmacophore were subjected to molecular docking against the three enzymes and those with an adequate docking score (n = 12) were evaluated for physicochemical and toxicological parameters and commercial availability. The structure exhibiting the greatest inhibitory potential against all three enzymes was subjected to molecular dynamics simulations (100 ns) to assess the stability of the inhibitor-enzyme systems. The results of this in silico approach indicate ZINC1733 can be a potential multi-target inhibitor of AChE, BuChE, and BACE-1, and future enzymatic assays are planned to validate those results.PPBE and PPGCF/UEFS; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais—FAPEMIG, grants APQ-02741-17, APQ-00855-19, APQ-01733-21, and APQ-04559-22Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico—CNPq-Brazil, grants 305117/2017-3, 426261/2018-6Fellowship of 2021 (grant 310108/2020-9

Erratum to: The study of cardiovascular risk in adolescents – ERICA: rationale, design and sample characteristics of a national survey examining cardiovascular risk factor profile in Brazilian adolescents

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Mental health and burnout syndrome among postgraduate students in medical and multidisciplinary residencies during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil : protocol for a prospective cohort study

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to high levels of physical, psychological, and social stress among health care professionals, including postgraduate students in medical and multidisciplinary residencies. This stress is associated with the intense fear of occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the virus known to cause COVID-19. These professionals are at risk of developing physical and mental illnesses not only due to the infection but also due to prolonged exposure to multidimensional stress and continued work overload. Objective: This study aims to evaluate the prevalence of symptoms suggestive of mental disorders and burnout syndrome and determine the risk factors for burnout among postgraduate students in medical and multidisciplinary residencies in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: For this prospective cohort study with parallel groups, participants were recruited between July and September 2020 to achieve a sample size of at least 1144 participants. Research instruments such as Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale; Patient Health Questionnaire; Brief Resilient Coping Scale; and Oldenburg Burnout Inventory will be used to collect data. Data will be collected in 2 waves: the first wave will include data related to sample characterization and psychosocial evaluation, and the second wave will be launched 12 weeks later and will include an evaluation of the incidence of burnout as well as correlations with the potential predictive factors collected in the first wave. Additionally, we will collect data regarding participants’ withdrawal from work. Results: The recruitment took place from July 29 to September 5, 2020. Data analyses for this phase is already in progress. The second phase of the study is also in progress. The final data collection began on December 1, 2020, and it will be completed by December 31, 2020. Conclusions: We believe the findings of this study will help evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health conditions of health professionals in Brazil as well as contribute to the planning and implementation of appropriate measures that can alleviate these mental health challenges. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/2429

FungalTraits:A user-friendly traits database of fungi and fungus-like stramenopiles

The cryptic lifestyle of most fungi necessitates molecular identification of the guild in environmental studies. Over the past decades, rapid development and affordability of molecular tools have tremendously improved insights of the fungal diversity in all ecosystems and habitats. Yet, in spite of the progress of molecular methods, knowledge about functional properties of the fungal taxa is vague and interpretation of environmental studies in an ecologically meaningful manner remains challenging. In order to facilitate functional assignments and ecological interpretation of environmental studies we introduce a user friendly traits and character database FungalTraits operating at genus and species hypothesis levels. Combining the information from previous efforts such as FUNGuild and Fun(Fun) together with involvement of expert knowledge, we reannotated 10,210 and 151 fungal and Stramenopila genera, respectively. This resulted in a stand-alone spreadsheet dataset covering 17 lifestyle related traits of fungal and Stramenopila genera, designed for rapid functional assignments of environmental studies. In order to assign the trait states to fungal species hypotheses, the scientific community of experts manually categorised and assigned available trait information to 697,413 fungal ITS sequences. On the basis of those sequences we were able to summarise trait and host information into 92,623 fungal species hypotheses at 1% dissimilarity threshold

Educomunicação e suas áreas de intervenção: Novos paradigmas para o diálogo intercultural

oai:omp.abpeducom.org.br:publicationFormat/1O material aqui divulgado representa, em essência, a contribuição do VII Encontro Brasileiro de Educomunicação ao V Global MIL Week, da UNESCO, ocorrido na ECA/USP, entre 3 e 5 de novembro de 2016. Estamos diante de um conjunto de 104 papers executivos, com uma média de entre 7 e 10 páginas, cada um. Com este rico e abundante material, chegamos ao sétimo e-book publicado pela ABPEducom, em seus seis primeiros anos de existência. A especificidade desta obra é a de trazer as “Áreas de Intervenção” do campo da Educomunicação, colocando-as a serviço de uma meta essencial ao agir educomunicativo: o diálogo intercultural, trabalhado na linha do tema geral do evento internacional: Media and Information Literacy: New Paradigms for Intercultural Dialogue