[Adapting the program notes for] "El amor brujo"

Adaptación de las notas al programa escritas por Adolfo Salazar, realizada por Manuel de Falla para el concierto organizado por la Associació de Música “da Cámera” el 7 de febrero de 1925 en el Palau de la Música Catalana. El documento se conserva en el Fondo Gisbert del AMF

Effect of daily consumption of extra virgin olive oil on the lipid profile and microbiota of HIV-infected patients over 50 years of age

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) has shown beneficial effects on the lipid profile and inflammatory parameters in general population. Our goal is to analyze these changes together with those of intestinal microbiota in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients over 50 years of age. Total cholesterol decreased significantly (5 mg/dL), and a nonsignificant decrease in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (12 mg/dL), triglycerides (21 mg/dL), and CRP (1.25 mg/dL) was observed. There was a significant increase in alpha diversity after the intervention in men and a decrease in proinflammatory genera such as Dethiosulfovibrionaceae was observed. Differences were also observed in the microbiota of men and women and according to the type of antiretroviral treatment. Sustained consumption of 50g of EVOO in elderly HIV-infected patients might be associated with an improvement in lipid profile and alfa diversity of intestinal microbiota.This work was financed in part by Grants from Plan Nacional de I+D+I and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional-FEDER (RD16/0025/0040; http:// www.isciii.es/isciii/es/contenidos/fd-investigacion/fd-ejecucion/fd-centrosparticipados/ centros-participados-redesretics.shtml) and Fondo de Investigación Sanitaria (PI 18/00819)

Reviewing the Composition of Vaginal Microbiota: Inclusion of Nutrition and Probiotic Factors in the Maintenance of Eubiosis

The vaginal microbiota has importance in preserving vaginal health and defending the host against disease. The advent of new molecular techniques and computer science has allowed researchers to discover microbial composition in depth and associate the structure of vaginal microbial communities. There is a consensus that vaginal flora is grouped into a restricted number of communities, although the structure of the community is constantly changing. Certain Community-State Types (CSTs) are more associated with poor reproductive outcomes and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) meanwhile, CSTs dominated by Lactobacillus species—particularly Lactobacillus crispatus—are more related to vaginal health. In this work, we have reviewed how modifiable and non-modifiable factors may affect normal vaginal microbiota homeostasis—including sexual behavior, race or ethnicity, and hygiene. Special interest has been given to how the use of probiotics, diet intake, and use of hormone replacement therapies (HRTs) can potentially impact vaginal microbiota composition

The imperative for quality control programs in Monkeypox virus DNA testing by PCR: CIBERINFEC quality control

Monkeypox; PCR; Quality controlVerola del mico; PCR; Control de qualitatViruela del mono; PCR; Control de calidadTo evaluate molecular assays for Mpox diagnosis available in various clinical microbiology services in Spain through a quality control (QC) approach. A total of 14 centers from across Spain participated in the study. The Reference Laboratory dispatched eight serum samples and eight nucleic acid extracts to each participating center. Some samples were spiked with Mpox or Vaccinia virus to mimic positive samples for Mpox or other orthopox viruses. Participating centers provided information on the results obtained, as well as the laboratory methods used. Among the 14 participating centers seven different commercial assays were employed, with the most commonly used kit being LightMix Modular Orthopox/Monkeypox (Mpox) Virus (Roche®). Of the 12 centers conducting Mpox determinations, concordance ranged from 62.5% (n = 1) to 100% (n = 11) for eluates and from 75.0% (n = 1) to 100% (n = 10) for serum. Among the 10 centers performing Orthopoxvirus determinations, a 100% concordance was observed for eluates, while for serum, concordance ranged from 87.5% (n = 6) to 100% (n = 4). Repeatedly, 6 different centers reported a false negative in serum samples for Orthopoxvirus diagnosis, particularly in a sample with borderline Ct = 39. Conversely, one center, using the TaqMan™ Mpox Virus Microbe Detection Assay (Thermo Fisher), reported false positives in Mpox diagnosis for samples spiked with vaccinia virus due to cross-reactions. We observed a positive correlation of various diagnostic assays for Mpox used by the participating centers with the reference values. Our results highlight the significance of standardization, validation, and ongoing QC in the microbiological diagnosis of infectious diseases, which might be particularly relevant for emerging viruses.This research was supported by CIBER (Strategic Action for Monkeypox)—Consorcio Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red—(CB 2021), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and Unión Europea—NextGenerationEU. A. d. S. is supported by ‘Instituto de Salud Carlos III’ (grant number JR22/00055)

Concepciones y prácticas docentes vinculadas a la capacidad “Reflexiona y evalúa la forma, el contenido y el contexto del texto” de la competencia lectora

El objetivo del presente estudio es identificar las concepciones de los docentes sobre la capacidad “Reflexiona y evalúa la forma, el contenido y el contexto del texto”, así como las prácticas docentes en aula vinculadas a esta capacidad en 2.° grado de secundaria en el marco de la Evaluación Muestral (EM) 2022. Para indagar este fenómeno, se optó por un abordaje cualitativo a través de un análisis de tipo temático (Braun y Clarke, 2006) de un conjunto de entrevistas, grupos focales de discusión y cuadernos de estudiantes. Los resultados muestran que la mayoría de docentes del área curricular de Comunicación conciben la capacidad de reflexión como la habilidad de expresar una opinión y reconocen sus componentes principales, los cuales se corresponden, en parte, con lo establecido en el Currículo Nacional de la Educación Básica. Sin embargo, un grupo de los docentes participantes asocia esta capacidad con las inferencias y el proceso metacognitivo. Asimismo, los docentes conciben el proceso lector como una serie de niveles y etapas que el estudiante debe transitar: primero, desarrollaría la comprensión literal; luego, la inferencial; y, solo después de estas dos capacidades, podría desarrollar la de reflexión. Por su parte, las prácticas docentes en aula reportadas por los docentes parecen reflejar sus concepciones. Si bien ellos reconocen la importancia de las actividades intertextuales, los cuadernos de los estudiantes evidencian que estas generalmente son inferenciales. Además, se ha encontrado que las preguntas abiertas son el principal medio para desarrollar las actividades de reflexión. No obstante, las preguntas de reflexión que los docentes elaboran suelen ser extratextuales (el estudiante no requiere leer el texto para responder) o, en algunos casos, inferenciales. Finalmente, se evidencia que la reflexión sigue siendo una de las capacidades relegadas en la práctica docente, pues apenas el 13,8 % de las preguntas formuladas en los cuadernos para evaluar la comprensión lectora corresponden a esta capacidad

Assessing the Impact of SARS-CoV-2 Lineages and Mutations on Patient Survival

Objectives: More than two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 still remains a global public health problem. Successive waves of infection have produced new SARS-CoV-2 variants with new mutations for which the impact on COVID-19 severity and patient survival is uncertain. Methods: A total of 764 SARS-CoV-2 genomes, sequenced from COVID-19 patients, hospitalized from 19th February 2020 to 30 April 2021, along with their clinical data, were used for survival analysis. Results: A significant association of B.1.1.7, the alpha lineage, with patient mortality (log hazard ratio (LHR) = 0.51, C.I. = [0.14,0.88]) was found upon adjustment by all the covariates known to affect COVID-19 prognosis. Moreover, survival analysis of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 genome revealed 27 of them were significantly associated with higher mortality of patients. Most of these mutations were located in the genes coding for the S, ORF8, and N proteins. Conclusions: This study illustrates how a combination of genomic and clinical data can provide solid evidence for the impact of viral lineage on patient survival.Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain (MICINN) Spanish Government PID2020117979RB-I00Instituto de Salud Carlos III European Commission European Commission IMP/00019Junta de Andalucia COVID-0012-2020 PS-2020-342European Social Fund (ESF) 871075Carlos Loucera PAIDI2020-DOC_0035

In vitro Selection of Probiotics for Microbiota Modulation in Normal-Weight and Severely Obese Individuals: Focus on Gas Production and Interaction With Intestinal Epithelial Cells

The intestinal microbiota plays important roles in the maintenance of health. Strategies aiming at its modulation, such as probiotics, have received a deal of attention. Several strains have been studied in different in vitro models; however, the correlation of results obtained with the in vivo data has been limited. This questions the usefulness of such in vitro selection models, traditionally relying on over-simplified tests, not considering the influence of the accompanying microbiota or focusing on microbiota composition without considering functional traits. Here we assess the potential of six Bifidobacterium, Lactobacillus and Lacticaseibacillus strains in an in vitro model to determine their impact on the microbiota not just in terms of composition but also of functionality. Moreover, we compared the responses obtained in two different population groups: normal-weight and severely obese subjects. Fecal cultures were conducted to evaluate the impact of the strains on specific intestinal microbial groups, on the production of short-chain fatty acids, and on two functional responses: the production of gas and the interaction with human intestinal epithelial cells. The response to the different probiotics differed between both human groups. The addition of the probiotic strains did not induce major changes on the microbiota composition, with significant increases detected almost exclusively for the species added. Higher levels of gas production were observed in cultures from normal-weight subjects than in the obese population, with some strains being able to significantly reduce gas production in the latter group. Moreover, in obese subjects all the Bifidobacterium strains tested and Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG were able to modify the response of the intestinal cells, restoring values similar to those obtained with the microbiotas of normal-weight subjects. Our results underline the need for the screening and selection of probiotics in a target-population specific manner by using appropriate in vitro models before enrolling in clinical intervention trials.The present work was mainly financed by the project AGL2013-43770-R (receiving funds from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness—MINECO and the European Union FEDER funds), and partly by projects AGL2017-83653-R (AEI/FEDER, UE), and RTI2018-098288-B-I00 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) and by a contract with the company Takanashi Milk Products (Yokohama, Japan). AN was the recipient of a predoctoral contract granted by MINECO (reference BES-2014-068796). SA is currently financed by a postdoctoral Juan de la Cierva contract (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Spain, ref. IJCI-2017-32156) and NS is currently the recipient of a postdoctoral contract awarded by the Fundación para la Investigación y la Innovación Biosanitaria del Principado de Asturias (FINBA)

Highly accurate whole-genome imputation of SARS-CoV-2 from partial or low-quality sequences

[Background] The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has emphasized the utility of viral whole-genome sequencing in the surveillance and control of the pathogen. An unprecedented ongoing global initiative is producing hundreds of thousands of sequences worldwide. However, the complex circumstances in which viruses are sequenced, along with the demand of urgent results, causes a high rate of incomplete and, therefore, useless sequences. Viral sequences evolve in the context of a complex phylogeny and different positions along the genome are in linkage disequilibrium. Therefore, an imputation method would be able to predict missing positions from the available sequencing data.[Results] We have developed the impuSARS application, which takes advantage of the enormous number of SARS-CoV-2 genomes available, using a reference panel containing 239,301 sequences, to produce missing data imputation in viral genomes. ImpuSARS was tested in a wide range of conditions (continuous fragments, amplicons or sparse individual positions missing), showing great fidelity when reconstructing the original sequences, recovering the lineage with a 100% precision for almost all the lineages, even in very poorly covered genomes (<20%).[Conclusions] Imputation can improve the pace of SARS-CoV-2 sequencing production by recovering many incomplete or low-quality sequences that would be otherwise discarded. ImpuSARS can be incorporated in any primary data processing pipeline for SARS-CoV-2 whole-genome sequencing.This work is supported by grant PT17/0009/0006 from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, COVID-0012–2020 from Consejería de Salud y Familias, Junta de Andalucía, and postdoctoral contract PAIDI2020- DOC_00350 for C.L., from Junta de Andalucía, co-funded by the European Social Fund (FSE) 2014–2020.Peer reviewe

The European Prevalence of Resistance Associated Substitutions among Direct Acting Antiviral Failures

Background: Approximately 71 million people are still in need of direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs). To achieve the World Health Organization Hepatitis C elimination goals, insight into the prevalence and influence of resistance associated substitutions (RAS) is of importance. Collaboration is key since DAA failure is rare and real-life data are scattered. We have established a European collaboration, HepCare, to perform in-depth analysis regarding RAS prevalence, patterns, and multiclass occurrence. Methods: Data were extracted from the HepCare cohort of patients who previously failed DAA therapy. Geno-and subtypes were provided by submitters and mostly based on in-house assays. They were reassessed using the Comet HCV subtyping tool. We considered RAS to be relevant if they were associated with DAA failure in vivo previously reported in literature. Results: We analyzed 938 patients who failed DAA therapy from ten different European countries. There were 239 genotypes (GT) 1a, 380 GT1b, 19 GT2c, 205 GT3a, 14 GT4a, and 68 GT4d infections. Several unusual subtypes (n = 15) (GT1b/g/l, GT3b, GT4k/n/r/t) were present. RAS appeared in over 80% of failures and over a quarter had three or more RAS. Multiclass RAS varied over target region and genotype between 0-48%. RAS patterns such as the Q30R + L31M and Q30R + Y93H in GT1a, the L31V + Y93H and L31V + Y93H for GT1b, and A30K + L31M and A30K/V + Y93H for GT3a all occurred with a prevalence below 5%. Conclusion: RAS occur frequently after DAA failures and follow a specific genotype and drug related pattern. Interpretation of the influence of RAS on retreatment is challenging due to various patterns, patients' characteristics, and previous treatment history. Moving towards HCV elimination, an ongoing resistance surveillance is essential to track the presence of RAS, RAS patterns and gather data for a re-treatment algorithm

Impact of extreme obesity and diet-induced weight loss on the fecal metabolome and gut microbiota

[Scope]: A limited number of human studies have characterized fecal microbiota and metabolome in extreme obesity and after diet-induced weight loss.[Methods and results]: Fecal samples from normal-weight and extremely obese adults and from obese participants before and after moderate diet-induced weight loss are evaluated for their interaction with the intestinal adenocarcinoma cell line HT29 using an impedance-based in vitro model, which reveals variations in the interaction between the gut microbiota and host linked to obesity status. Microbiota composition, short chain fatty acids, and other intestinal metabolites are further analyzed to assess the interplay among diet, gut microbiota, and host in extreme obesity. Microbiota profiles are distinct between normal-weight and obese participants and are accompanied by fecal signatures in the metabolism of biliary compounds and catecholamines. Moderate diet-induced weight loss promotes shifts in the gut microbiota, and the primary fecal metabolomics features are associated with diet and the gut–liver and gut–brain axes.[Conclusions]: Analyses of the fecal microbiota and metabolome enable assessment of the impact of diet on gut microbiota composition and activity, supporting the potential use of certain fecal metabolites or members of the gut microbiota as biomarkers for the efficacy of weight loss in extreme obesity.The present work was mainly financed by the project AGL2013-43770-R (receiving funds from the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness—MINECO and the European Union FEDER funds), and partly by projects AGL2017-83653-R (AEI/FEDER, UE), and RTI2018-098288-B-I00 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). A.M.N. was the recipient of a predoctoral contract granted by MINECO (reference BES-2014-068796) and N.S. received a postdoctoral Juan de la Cierva Contract (Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Spain, reference IJCI-2015-19885) and currently she has a postdoctoral contract awarded by the Biosanitary Research Foundation in Asturias (FINBA, Spain).Peer reviewe