A study of prevalence and seasonal trends of different malarial species in district hospital

Background: Malaria imposes great socio-economic burden on humanity. In India, the epidemiology of malaria is complex because of wide distribution of anopheline vectors which transmitting mainly two Plasmodial species named P. falciparum and P. vivax. Though India is one of the known endemic countries, incidence of malaria is commonly influenced by environmental factors like climate, season, temperature and socioeconomic status. Objectives of the study were to know the prevalence of different malarial species and to know the seasonal trend of malaria.Methods: This study done microbiology department of district hospital over period of June 2015 to December 2015. We had collected total 6763 samples. We used Microscopic examination for the diagnosis of malaria by preparing thick and thin smears and stained using field stain.Results: We had collected total 6763 samples out of which 108 samples are found microscopically positive (1.5%). In our hospital we observed only Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum spp. Prevalence of P. vivax (64%) found more compare to P. falciparum (34%) and peak positivity rate found in July to October.Conclusions: In our study the most frequently implicated species was P. vivax. This indicates that P. vivax is the most widespread infection in India which results in a pronounced morbidity and the seasonal prevalence observed high in July to October. In order to implement effective preventive measures, proper surveillance on the incidence and prevalence of malaria is required

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Expanding the donor pool for kidney transplantation in India

The best and most cost-effective treatment for end-stage renal disease patients is living donor (LD) renal transplantation. It has survival benefit compared to deceased donor (DD) kidney transplant (DDKT) and long-term dialysis and provides a better quality of life. Efficient and effective kidney allocation methods are increasingly necessary to address the problem of organ scarcity. The use of kidney paired donation transplant has increased access to LD kidney transplantation (LDKT) with outstanding results. ABO-incompatible kidney transplantation (KT) and desensitization protocol can expand the donor pool, but as integral to any aggressive immunosuppression protocol, they are associated with increased risk of infection and malignancy. Given the widespread organ shortage, DDKT from donors with sepsis, donors who died from snakebite or acute kidney injury, controlled donation after cardiac death, older donors, can be considered for KT with an acceptable outcome. The acceptable outcome can be achieved with dual KT using kidneys from expanded criteria donors in older population. Dual KT from pediatric donors to adult recipients or from adult marginal DDs is a promising way to expand the donor pool. Carefully selected donor with HIV, HCV, and HBV positivity is not a contraindication for living kidney donation. Careful and meticulous selection of patient and donor is essential for successful outcome. Affordable or free transplantation is other way to increase transplantation rate in developing country. The community support can make transplantation available free to the poor patients under community-government partnership. Various steps should be taken to promote LDKT and DDKT program