Predicting the vulnerability of great apes to disease : the role of superspreaders and their potential vaccination

Charlotte Carne was funded by a scholarship from the University of Roehampton (http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/home/). The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (http://www.rzss.org.uk/) provided core funding for the Budongo Conservation Field Station. The orang-utan field research was funded by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS: http://www.wcs.org/), the US Fish and Wildlife Service Great Ape Conservation Fund (http://www.fws.gov/international/wildlif​e-without-borders/great-ape-conservation​-fund.html), Orang-utan Tropical Peatland Project (OuTrop: http://www.outrop.com/), Primate Conservation Inc. (http://www.primate.org/), and the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation (http://leakeyfoundation.org/).Disease is a major concern for the conservation of great apes, and one that is likely to become increasingly relevant as deforestation and the rise of ecotourism bring humans and apes into ever closer proximity. Consequently, it is imperative that preventative measures are explored to ensure that future epidemics do not wipe out the remaining populations of these animals. In this paper, social network analysis was used to investigate vulnerability to disease in a population of wild orang-utans and a community of wild chimpanzees. Potential 'superspreaders' of disease - individuals with disproportionately central positions in the community or population - were identified, and the efficacy of vaccinating these individuals assessed using simulations. Three resident female orang-utans were identified as potential superspreaders, and females and unflanged males were predicted to be more influential in disease spread than flanged males. By contrast, no superspreaders were identified in the chimpanzee network, although males were significantly more central than females. In both species, simulating the vaccination of the most central individuals in the network caused a greater reduction in potential disease pathways than removing random individuals, but this effect was considerably more pronounced for orang-utans. This suggests that targeted vaccinations would have a greater impact on reducing disease spread among orang-utans than chimpanzees. Overall, these results have important implications for orang-utan and chimpanzee conservation and highlight the role that certain individuals may play in the spread of disease and its prevention by vaccination.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Challenges in Meeting the Mental Health and Wellbeing Needs of Refugee Children and Young People in England: Evaluation and Critique of Policy and Guidance

In this chapter the foci for examination and discussion are some of challenges in meeting the mental health and wellbeing needs of refugee children and young people in England. While much health policy applies across the UK, we address these issues within the English context. Our work and our writing is informed by a children and young peoples’ rights perspective - United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989, hereafter UNCRC); Ruck et al (2017), and by the understanding that refugee children and young people are children and young people first (Crawley, 2006)

Whole Genome Pathway Analysis Identifies an Association of Cadmium Response Gene Loss with Copy Number Variation in Mutant p53 Bearing Uterine Endometrial Carcinomas

Massive chromosomal aberrations are a signature of advanced cancer, although the factors promoting the pervasive incidence of these copy number alterations (CNAs) are poorly understood. Gatekeeper mutations, such as p53, contribute to aneuploidy, yet p53 mutant tumors do not always display CNAs. Uterine Corpus Endometrial Carcinoma (UCEC) offers a unique system to begin to evaluate why some cancers acquire high CNAs while others evolve another route to oncogenesis, since about half of p53 mutant UCEC tumors have a relatively flat CNA landscape and half have 20-90% of their genome altered in copy number.We extracted copy number information from 68 UCEC genomes mutant in p53 by the GISTIC2 algorithm. GO term pathway analysis, via GOrilla, was used to identify suppressed pathways. Genes within these pathways were mapped for focal or wide distribution. Deletion hotspots were evaluated for temporal incidence.Multiple pathways contributed to the development of pervasive CNAs, including developmental, metabolic, immunological, cell adhesion and cadmium response pathways. Surprisingly, cadmium response pathway genes are predicted as the earliest loss events within these tumors: in particular, the metallothionein genes involved in heavy metal sequestration. Loss of cadmium response genes were associated with copy number changes and poorer prognosis, contrasting with 'copy number flat' tumors which instead exhibited substantive mutation.Metallothioneins are lost early in the development of high CNA endometrial cancer, providing a potential mechanism and biological rationale for increased incidence of endometrial cancer with cadmium exposure. Developmental and metabolic pathways are altered later in tumor progression