Comparison of five commercial kits for SARS CoV 2 RT-PCR diagnosis.

Background: SARS-CoV-2 was identified as the causal agent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its rapid spread and huge health and economic impact prompted the development of diagnostic tests to opportunely identify affected individuals as a prerequisite to quarantine them and avoid further spreading the infection. Methods: The following commercial RT-PCR kits, approved by our National Institute of Diagnostics and Epidemiological Reference of InDRE (from the Spanish name) were tested: Vircell (Granda, Spain), Light Mix Roche (Berlin, Germany), Logix Smart (Utah, USA), 1 Copy (Korea Republic), and RIDA GENE (Darmstadt, Germany). RNA was isolated either manually or automatically (QIAmp Viral RNA and SMART-32, DAAN GENE kits, respectively) from naso and oro pharyngeal swabs from suspicious individuals living in Mexico city and outskirts. Results: Since May 2020, when we received InDRE´s SARS-COV2 diagnostic approval, we have processed nearly 20,000 naso and oro-pharyngel swabs samples. The qualification of kits, as per their analytical performance, value of their controls, and convenience (mono versus multiplex) resulted in the following ranking from the most to the least convenient: 1) RIDA, 2) Vircell, 3) Roche, 4) 1 Copy, and 5) Logix Smart. Conclusions: Both, analytical performance and convenience to process quantious parallel samples in a short period of time, and particularly sensitivity, were key parameters for our laboratory to adopt either RIDA or Vircell kits. They are particularly useful in cases with low viral load, which even if asymptomatics, can be contagious for vulnerable subjects within their families, community, and at work

Trypanosoma evansi e trypanosoma vivax: biologia, diagnóstico e controle.

Tripanosomoses; Taxonomia; Morfologia; Ciclo vital; Teminologia utiilzada para os tripanosomas baseada no Trypanosoma brucei; Manutenção dos Tripanosomas; Variação molecular em Tripanosomas; Ecologia e sociologia da variação antigênica; Genética de populações de Tripanosomas; Diagnóstico; Caracterização molecular; Métodos de controle; Resistência à drogas; Avaliação do uso do tratamento profilático estratégico ou curativo; Quimioterapia da Tripanosomose por Trypanosoma evansi (tratamento curativo); Quimioterapia da Tripanosomose por Trypanosoma vivax (tratamento curativo); Controle estratégico do Trypanosoma evansi através do uso de drogas tripanocidas; Controle estratégico do Trypanosoma vivax através do uso de drogas tripanocidas; Comparação do Isometamidium e Brometo de Homidium como droga profilática; Mecanismos experimentais de liberação lenta contendo Brometo de Homidium e Isometamidium; Análise econômica; Controle dos vetores; Controle através do uso de inseticidas; Piretroides; Utilização de armadilhas impregnadas com inseticidas

Mexican Medicinal Plants as an Alternative for the Development of New Compounds Against Protozoan Parasites

The protozoan parasites Plasmodium, Leishmania, Trypanosoma, Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia lamblia, and Trichomonas vaginalis, cause high morbidity and mortality in developed and developing countries. P. falciparum is responsible for malaria, one of the most severe infectious diseases in Africa. Hundreds of million people are affected by Trypanosoma and Leishmania that cause African and South American trypanosomiasis, and leishmaniasis. E. histolytica and G. lamblia contribute to the enormous burden of diarrheal diseases worldwide; trichomoniasis is the most common nonviral sexually transmitted disease in the world. Because of the important side effects of current treatments and the decrease in drug susceptibility, there is a renewed interest for the search of therapeutic alternatives against these pathogens. Natural products obtained from medicinal plants and their derivatives have been recognized for many years as a source of therapeutic agents. There are numerous reports about medicinal plants that are used by indigenous communities to treat gastrointestinal complaints. Importantly, phytochemical studies have allowed the identification of several secondary metabolites with anti-parasite activity. Our review revealed that Mexican medicinal plants have a great potential for the identification of new molecules with activity against protozoan parasites of medical importance worldwide and their potential use as new therapeutic compounds

Anthropometric characteristics, quality of life and functional capacity in adults living with HIV in Puerto Rico

Survival and longevity rates in people living with HIV (HIV+) have increased with the availability and use of antiretroviral therapy (ART). However, despite the above HIV+ adults treated with ART have a higher risk of developing dyslipidemia and high waist circumference. In addition, they have lower cardiorespiratory fitness, loss of muscle mass, reduced balance, and reduced functional capacity, which affects their quality of life. To explore the impact of balance perception, treadmill time, grip strength, body mass index (BMI), and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) on quality of life in Latino Hispanic people living with HIV. This study recruited twenty-five participants from a community-based center, La Perla de Gran Precio, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with the medical diagnosis of HIV. Descriptive measures were obtained for all variables of interest, and correlation and regression analyses were used to assess the associations between functional capacity, quality of life, and anthropometric measures. Result: Men had greater left- and right-hand grip strength than women (86.9±18.8, 56.9±26.8 kg; p=0.003 and 87.6±15.1 vs. 61.4±26.6 kg; p =0.004). Two anthropometric variables showed a trend toward a moderate positive correlation with quality of life:  WHtR (r= -0.38, p =0.12) and BMI (r= -0.38, p = p-0.14). Although gender differences in upper body strength are expected, handgrip strength is within the gender-specific average range of the general population. The integration of anthropometric characteristics and upper body strength when prescribing exercise must be considered since these factors influence functional capacity and quality of life among HIV+ adults

Developing a nanoparticle test for prostate cancer scoring

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Over-diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer has been a major problem in prostate cancer care and management. Currently the most relevant prognostic factor to predict a patient's risk of death due to prostate cancer is the Gleason score of the biopsied tissue samples. However, pathological analysis is subjective, and the Gleason score is only a qualitative estimate of the cancer malignancy. Molecular biomarkers and diagnostic tests that can accurately predict prostate tumor aggressiveness are rather limited.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>We report here for the first time the development of a nanoparticle test that not only can distinguish prostate cancer from normal and benign conditions, but also has the potential to predict the aggressiveness of prostate cancer quantitatively. To conduct the test, a prostate tissue lysate sample is spiked into a blood serum or human IgG solution and the spiked sample is incubated with a citrate-protected gold nanoparticle solution. IgG is known to adsorb to citrate-protected gold nanoparticles to form a "protein corona" on the nanoparticle surface. From this study, we discovered that certain tumor-specific molecules can interact with IgG and change the adsorption behavior of IgG to the gold nanoparticles. This change is reflected in the nanoparticle size of the assay solution and detected by a dynamic light scattering technique. Assay data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA for multiple variant analysis, and using the Student <it>t-</it>test or nonparametric Mann-Whitney <it>U-</it>tests for pairwise analyses.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>An inverse, quantitative correlation of the average nanoparticle size of the assay solution with tumor status and histological diagnostic grading was observed from the nanoparticle test. IgG solutions spiked with prostate tumor tissue exhibit significantly smaller nanoparticle size than the solutions spiked with normal and benign tissues. The higher grade the tumor is, the smaller the nanoparticle size is. The test particularly revealed large differences among the intermediate Grade 2 tumors, and suggested the need to treat them differently.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Development of a new nanoparticle test may provide a quantitative measure of the prostate cancer aggressiveness. If validated in a larger study of patients with prostate cancer, this test could become a new diagnostic tool in conjunction with Gleason Score pathology diagnostics to better distinguish aggressive cancer from indolent tumor.</p

Intracultural diversity in a model of social dynamics

We study the consequences of introducing individual nonconformity in social interactions, based on Axelrod's model for the dissemination of culture. A constraint on the number of situations in which interaction may take place is introduced in order to lift the unavoidable ho mogeneity present in the final configurations arising in Axelrod's related models. The inclusion of this constraint leads to the occurrence of complex patterns of intracultural diversity whose statistical properties and spatial distribution are characterized by means of the concepts of cultural affinity and cultural cli ne. It is found that the relevant quantity that determines the properties of intracultural diversity is given by the fraction of cultural features that characterizes the cultural nonconformity of individuals.Comment: 7 pages, 2 tables, 6 figure

Prevalencia del virus de la diarrea viral bovina y de animales portadores del virus en bovinos en la provincia de Espinar, Cusco.

The prevalence of bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) in 406 cattle was evaluated of both sexes and older than 6 months. Animals belonged to 114 small farmers from three rural communities of the province of Espinar, Cusco, Peru. Blood samples were collected according to three age groups Ɩ-12, 13-23, \u3e24 months old). Serum samples were tested for antibodies against BVDV using the viral neutralization test. The 56.2 ± 4.8% 鴤/406) of samples had antibodies against BVDV. Persistently infected animals were not detected. Antibodies were present in the three age groups, but the highest prevalence ࿡.4%) was detected in animals older than 24 months of age. The 51.3% ྴ/39) of young and adult bulls had antibodies against BVDV. Antibodies titers varied from 2 to \u3e256, and high titers 鳀 to \u3e256) were detected in 42.1% of animals of 13 to \u3e24 months of age. The 86.8% ဃ/114) of the small farmers had at least one animal seropositive to BVDV

Ensemble of Hankel Matrices for Face Emotion Recognition

In this paper, a face emotion is considered as the result of the composition of multiple concurrent signals, each corresponding to the movements of a specific facial muscle. These concurrent signals are represented by means of a set of multi-scale appearance features that might be correlated with one or more concurrent signals. The extraction of these appearance features from a sequence of face images yields to a set of time series. This paper proposes to use the dynamics regulating each appearance feature time series to recognize among different face emotions. To this purpose, an ensemble of Hankel matrices corresponding to the extracted time series is used for emotion classification within a framework that combines nearest neighbor and a majority vote schema. Experimental results on a public available dataset shows that the adopted representation is promising and yields state-of-the-art accuracy in emotion classification.Comment: Paper to appear in Proc. of ICIAP 2015. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1506.0500

Diet cost and quality using the Healthy Eating Index-2015 in adults from urban and rural areas of Mexico

Objective: To assess the association between diet cost and quality by place of residence. Design: We analysed cross-sectional data of the National Health and Nutrition Survey-2012. Diet cost was estimated by linking dietary data, obtained from a 7-d SFFQ, with municipality food prices, which were derived from a national expenditure survey. Diet quality was assessed using the Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015). Association between quintiles of diet cost and HEI-2015 was assessed using linear regression analysis. Settings: Mexico. Participants: 2438 adults (18-59 years). Results: Diet cost was positively associated with diet quality (HEI-2015) in urban but not in rural areas. Compared with quintile (Q1) of cost, the increment in diet quality score was 1 center dot 17 (95 % CI -0 center dot 06, 4 center dot 33) for Q2, 2 center dot 14 (95 % CI -0 center dot 06, 4 center dot 33) for Q3, 4 center dot 70 (95 % CI 2 center dot 62, 6 center dot 79) for Q4 and 6 center dot 34 (95 % CI 4 center dot 20, 8 center dot 49) for Q5 (P-trend < 0 center dot 001). Individuals in rural v. urban areas on average have higher quality diets at lower cost with higher intakes of whole grains and beans and lower intakes of Na, added sugars and saturated fats. Living in the South, being indigenous and having low socio-economic status were also associated with higher quality diets. Conclusions: Diet cost was positively associated with diet quality, but only in urban areas. Further studies are needed to understand the relation between diet cost and quality in rural areas. To improve overall diet quality in Mexico, strategies that aim to reduce the cost of high-quality diets should consider the heterogeneity by place of residence