Critical reflections on evidence, ethics and effectiveness in the management of tuberculosis: public health and global perspectives

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis is a major cause of morbidity and mortality globally. Recent scholarly attention to public health ethics provides an opportunity to analyze several ethical issues raised by the global tuberculosis pandemic. DISCUSSION: Recently articulated frameworks for public health ethics emphasize the importance of effectiveness in the justification of public health action. This paper critically reviews the relationship between these frameworks and the published evidence of effectiveness of tuberculosis interventions, with a specific focus on the controversies engendered by the endorsement of programs of service delivery that emphasize direct observation of therapy. The role of global economic inequities in perpetuating the tuberculosis pandemic is also discussed. SUMMARY: Tuberculosis is a complex but well understood disease that raises important ethical challenges for emerging frameworks in public health ethics. The exact role of effectiveness as a criterion for judging the ethics of interventions needs greater discussion and analysis. Emerging frameworks are silent about the economic conditions contributing to the global burden of illness associated with tuberculosis and this requires remediation

Abscisic acid induced a negative geotropic response in dark-incubated Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

© 2019, The Author(s). The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) plays a role in stresses that alter plant water status and may also regulate root gravitropism and hydrotropism. ABA also exists in the aquatic algal progenitors of land plants, but other than its involvement in stress responses, its physiological role in these microorganisms remains elusive. We show that exogenous ABA significantly altered the HCO3− uptake of Chamydomonas reinhardtii in a light-intensity-dependent manner. In high light ABA enhanced HCO3− uptake, while under low light uptake was diminished. In the dark, ABA induced a negative geotropic movement of the algae to an extent dependent on the time of sampling during the light/dark cycle. The algae also showed a differential, light-dependent directional taxis response to a fixed ABA source, moving horizontally towards the source in the light and away in the dark. We conclude that light and ABA signal competitively in order for algae to position themselves in the water column to minimise photo-oxidative stress and optimise photosynthetic efficiency. We suggest that the development of this response mechanism in motile algae may have been an important step in the evolution of terrestrial plants and that its retention therein strongly implicates ABA in the regulation of their relevant tropisms

A Novel ‘Gene Insertion/Marker Out’ (GIMO) Method for Transgene Expression and Gene Complementation in Rodent Malaria Parasites

Research on the biology of malaria parasites has greatly benefited from the application of reverse genetic technologies, in particular through the analysis of gene deletion mutants and studies on transgenic parasites that express heterologous or mutated proteins. However, transfection in Plasmodium is limited by the paucity of drug-selectable markers that hampers subsequent genetic modification of the same mutant. We report the development of a novel ‘gene insertion/marker out’ (GIMO) method for two rodent malaria parasites, which uses negative selection to rapidly generate transgenic mutants ready for subsequent modifications. We have created reference mother lines for both P. berghei ANKA and P. yoelii 17XNL that serve as recipient parasites for GIMO-transfection. Compared to existing protocols GIMO-transfection greatly simplifies and speeds up the generation of mutants expressing heterologous proteins, free of drug-resistance genes, and requires far fewer laboratory animals. In addition we demonstrate that GIMO-transfection is also a simple and fast method for genetic complementation of mutants with a gene deletion or mutation. The implementation of GIMO-transfection procedures should greatly enhance Plasmodium reverse-genetic research

The use of quality tools and techniques in product introduction: an assessment methodology

Based on fieldwork carried out on two Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council‐funded projects in the area of design, the paper presents the details of an assessment approach which has been developed to assess the use and application of quality tools and techniques in the new product design and development process. Its use will help management recognise the symptoms, root causes, issues and problems that are adversely affecting NPDD, with respect to application (or lack of it) of quality tools and techniques.</jats:p