Stress conditions in the host induce persister cells and influence biofilm formation by Staphylococcus epidermidis RP62A

INTRODUCTION: Studies have demonstrated that pathogens react to the harsh conditions in human tissues by inducing mechanisms that promote survival. METHODS: Persistence and biofilm-forming ability were evaluated during stress conditions that mimic those in the host. RESULTS: Carbon-source availability had a positive effect on Staphylococcus epidermidis RP62A adhesion during hypoxia, accompanied by a decrease in pH. In contrast, iron limitation led to decreased surface-adherent biomass, accompanied by an increase medium acidification and lactate levels. Interestingly, iron starvation and hypoxia induced persister cells in planktonic culture. CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight the role of host stress in the virulence of S. epidermidis

Identification of suitable reference genes for real time quantitative polymerase chain reaction assays on pectoralis major muscle in chicken (Gallus gallus)

Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPqCoordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPESFundação de Apoio a Pesquisa e à Inovação Tecnológica do Estado de Sergipe - FAPITEC/SEThirteen reference genes were investigated to determine their stability to be used as a housekeeping in gene expression studies in skeletal muscle of chickens. Five different algorithms were used for ranking of reference genes and results suggested that individual rankings of the genes differed among them. The stability of the expression of reference genes were validated using samples obtained from the Pectoralis major muscle in chicken. Samples were obtained from chickens in different development periods post hatch and under different nutritional diets. For gene expression calculation the ΔΔCt approach was applied to compare relative expression of pairs of genes within each of 52 samples when normalized to mitochondrially encoded cytochrome c oxidase II (MT-CO2) target gene. Our findings showed that hydroxymethylbilane synthase (HMBS) and hypoxanthine phosphoribosyl transferase 1 (HPRT1) are the most stable reference genes while transferrin receptor (TFRC) and beta-2-microglobulin (B2M) ranked as the least stable genes in the Pectoralis major muscle of chickens. Moreover, our results revealed that HMBS and HPRT1 gene expression did not change due to dietary variations and thus it is recommended for accurate normalization of RT-qPCR data in chicken Pectoralis major muscle

Assistência de enfermagem durante a pandemia da Covid-19/ Nursing care during the Covid-19 pandemic

A pandemia do COVID-19 é um desafio para os serviços de saúde, exigindo atenção de alta complexidade, novos modelos de trabalho e processos de educação permanente para os profissionais de saúde, as decisões devem ser tomadas de acordo com as recomendações globais para o manejo do vírus SARS-CoV2. Esta revisão visa conhecer os cuidados da enfermagem frente à segurança do paciente durante a pandemia da Covid-19. Foi realizada uma revisão integrativa da literatura com buscas na BVS, nas bases de dados da Literatura Latino-Americana do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde (LILACS), Index Medicus Eletrônico da National Library of Medicine (MEDLINE) e Base de Dados de Enfermagem (BDEnf), através dos descritores: ‘segurança do paciente’, ‘infecção por coronavírus’ e ‘cuidados de enfermagem’. Os critérios de inclusão utilizados foram: artigos em português, Inglês e espanhol, disponíveis completos e gratuitamente nas referidas bases de dados e publicados no período de 2020 a 2021 que atendiam à temática sobre os cuidados de enfermagem frente à segurança do paciente durante a pandemia da Covid-19. Foram selecionados 10 estudos que atenderam aos critérios metodológicos. Com base nos achados foram encontradas mudanças nos protocolos de segurança do paciente em mais de três áreas da assistência, como cirurgia, urgência e emergência, atenção básica, oncologia e atendimento pré-hospitalar. As discussões foram apresentadas em duas categorias: ‘Mudanças nos protocolos de segurança durante a pandemia da Covid-19’ e ‘Cuidados de enfermagem ao paciente com suspeita e/ou confirmação de Covid-19’. Para promover eficácia na assistência  de enfermagem, vale ressaltar a importância da segurança do paciente no atributo do cuidado da enfermagem. Os profissionais devem manter-se atentos quanto às atualizações dos protocolos sobre a covid-19 divulgados pelo ministério da saúde, garantindo melhoria nos cuidados prestados aos pacientes e diminuição do risco de contaminação dos profissionais

Maternal anemia and birth weight : a prospective cohort study

Objective To investigate the association between maternal anemia and low/insufficient birth weight. Design A prospective cohort study of pregnant women who underwent prenatal care at the healthcare units in a municipality of northeast Brazil together with their newborn infants was carried out. The pregnant women were classified as having anemia when the hemoglobin level was below 11 g/dl. Infants who were born full term weighing less than 2500 grams were classified as low birth weight, and those weighing between 2500 and 2999 grams were classified as insufficient weight. The occurrence of maternal anemia and its association with birth weight was verified using crude and adjusted Relative Risk (RR) estimates with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95%CIs). Results The final sample was comprised of 622 women. Maternal anemia was considered a risk factor for low/insufficient birth weight, after adjusting the effect measurement for maternal age, family income, urinary infection, parity, alcoholic beverage consumption during pregnancy and gestational body mass index: RRadjusted = 1.38 [95% CI: 1.07 to 1.77]. Conclusions Maternal anemia was associated with low/insufficient birth weight, representing a risk factor for the gestational outcomes studied

Análise de Acidentes com Animais Peçonhentos no Estado de Pernambuco/ Analysis of Accidents with Venomous Animals in the State of Pernambuco

Animais peçonhentos injetam o veneno produzido ou modificado em suas presas através de algum aparato inoculador. Os que mais causam acidentes no Brasil são algumas espécies de serpentes, escorpiões e aranhas, principalmente em áreas rurais e constituem em emergência clínica, principalmente se a vítima for criança. Nestes casos, quanto mais rápida a assistência for dada, menor o risco de sequelas e óbitos. Sendo assim, pretende-se descrever o perfil dos acidentes por animais peçonhentos AAPs no Estado de Pernambuco. Bem como, reconhecer as intervenções imediatas às inoculações de acordo com o tipo de envenenamento. Trata-se de um estudo epidemiológico do tipo quantitativo e descritivo, sobre os AAPs no Estado de Pernambuco, entre 2013 e 2017; os dados foram obtidos no Sistema de Informação de Agravos de Notificação - SINAN do Ministério da Saúde analisando-se as variáveis tipo (serpente, escorpião e aranha), tempo até do atendimento e a porcentagem de cura. Durante o período foram registrados 896.284 casos de AAPs no Brasil. Em Pernambuco foram 65.766 casos, com uma média de atendimento de 58% nas 3 primeiras horas. Os dados obtidos identificaram para serpentes (3.945 casos) com 86,9 % de cura, escorpiões (50.793 casos) com 90,7 % de cura e aranhas (872 casos) com 90,3% de cura. Dentre as intervenções imediatas às inoculações destacou-se: lavar a região com água e sabão; entrar em contato com o Centro de Assistência Toxicológica e dirigir-se imediatamente ao centro de referência indicado, se possível levando o animal vivo ou morto, para a correta administração do soro específico. Contudo é evidente que o evento possui grande magnitude no Estado de Pernambuco, ocupando a quinta posição nacional, com destaque para os acidentes escorpiônicos, em sua maioria do gênero T.stigmurus, concluindo a necessidade de políticas públicas envolvendo profissionais e comunidade, como alvo de prevenção, diminuição e domínio sobre o assunto

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Worldwide trends in underweight and obesity from 1990 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 3663 population-representative studies with 222 million children, adolescents, and adults

Background Underweight and obesity are associated with adverse health outcomes throughout the life course. We estimated the individual and combined prevalence of underweight or thinness and obesity, and their changes, from 1990 to 2022 for adults and school-aged children and adolescents in 200 countries and territories. Methods We used data from 3663 population-based studies with 222 million participants that measured height and weight in representative samples of the general population. We used a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends in the prevalence of different BMI categories, separately for adults (age ≥20 years) and school-aged children and adolescents (age 5–19 years), from 1990 to 2022 for 200 countries and territories. For adults, we report the individual and combined prevalence of underweight (BMI <18·5 kg/m2) and obesity (BMI ≥30 kg/m2). For schoolaged children and adolescents, we report thinness (BMI <2 SD below the median of the WHO growth reference) and obesity (BMI >2 SD above the median). Findings From 1990 to 2022, the combined prevalence of underweight and obesity in adults decreased in 11 countries (6%) for women and 17 (9%) for men with a posterior probability of at least 0·80 that the observed changes were true decreases. The combined prevalence increased in 162 countries (81%) for women and 140 countries (70%) for men with a posterior probability of at least 0·80. In 2022, the combined prevalence of underweight and obesity was highest in island nations in the Caribbean and Polynesia and Micronesia, and countries in the Middle East and north Africa. Obesity prevalence was higher than underweight with posterior probability of at least 0·80 in 177 countries (89%) for women and 145 (73%) for men in 2022, whereas the converse was true in 16 countries (8%) for women, and 39 (20%) for men. From 1990 to 2022, the combined prevalence of thinness and obesity decreased among girls in five countries (3%) and among boys in 15 countries (8%) with a posterior probability of at least 0·80, and increased among girls in 140 countries (70%) and boys in 137 countries (69%) with a posterior probability of at least 0·80. The countries with highest combined prevalence of thinness and obesity in school-aged children and adolescents in 2022 were in Polynesia and Micronesia and the Caribbean for both sexes, and Chile and Qatar for boys. Combined prevalence was also high in some countries in south Asia, such as India and Pakistan, where thinness remained prevalent despite having declined. In 2022, obesity in school-aged children and adolescents was more prevalent than thinness with a posterior probability of at least 0·80 among girls in 133 countries (67%) and boys in 125 countries (63%), whereas the converse was true in 35 countries (18%) and 42 countries (21%), respectively. In almost all countries for both adults and school-aged children and adolescents, the increases in double burden were driven by increases in obesity, and decreases in double burden by declining underweight or thinness. Interpretation The combined burden of underweight and obesity has increased in most countries, driven by an increase in obesity, while underweight and thinness remain prevalent in south Asia and parts of Africa. A healthy nutrition transition that enhances access to nutritious foods is needed to address the remaining burden of underweight while curbing and reversing the increase in obesit

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis