Social network X and mental health in Brazil in times of coronavirus

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a number of impacts on people's daily lives around the world. The radical change in people's daily routines has led to an increase in the use and consumption of social media content. The scenario of uncertainty during this period has been favorable to the increase in bouts of anxiety and depression, leading many people to post content about these topics on social media. Objective: Develop a tool that uses natural language processing techniques to analyze Brazilian posts on X, formerly Twitter, during the pandemic. Materials and Methods: We collected and analyzed X posts related to mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. We used sentiment analysis and topic identification methods to evaluate the content of the posts. Results: The results showed that the pandemic has had a negative psychological impact on the lives of Brazilians. The "News" broadcast and the "Symptoms/Disorders" produced caused significant emotional discomfort, with women being the most affected. The analysis revealed an increase in the number of publications related to mental health during the pandemic. Conclusion: This study has identified new information that can help in the construction of public policies to minimize the negative effects of the pandemic on the mental health of the Brazilian population. The analysis of social media posts (X only) can provide valuable insights to better understand people's needs and concerns during public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic

A new approach for potential drug target discovery through in silico metabolic pathway analysis using Trypanosoma cruzi genome information

The current drug options for the treatment of chronic Chagas disease have not been sufficient and high hopes have been placed on the use of genomic data from the human parasite Trypanosoma cruzi to identify new drug targets and develop appropriate treatments for both acute and chronic Chagas disease. However, the lack of a complete assembly of the genomic sequence and the presence of many predicted proteins with unknown or unsure functions has hampered our complete view of the parasite's metabolic pathways. Moreover, pinpointing new drug targets has proven to be more complex than anticipated and has revealed large holes in our understanding of metabolic pathways and their integrated regulation, not only for this parasite, but for many other similar pathogens. Using an in silicocomparative study on pathway annotation and searching for analogous and specific enzymes, we have been able to predict a considerable number of additional enzymatic functions in T. cruzi. Here we focus on the energetic pathways, such as glycolysis, the pentose phosphate shunt, the Krebs cycle and lipid metabolism. We point out many enzymes that are analogous to those of the human host, which could be potential new therapeutic targets