Search results for "IOUS"

Abacavir Induces Arterial Thrombosis in a Murine Model.

2018

Background The purinergic system is known to underlie prothrombotic and proinflammatory vascular programs, making the profile of experimental actions demonstrated by abacavir compatible with thrombogenesis. However, direct evidence of a prothrombotic effect by the drug has been lacking. Methods The present study appraised the effects of abacavir in a well-validated animal model of arterial thrombosis. The role of ATP-P2X7 receptors in the actions of the drug was also assessed, and the actions of recognized vascular-damaging agents and other nucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) were evaluated and compared to those of abacavir. Results Abacavir dose-dependently promoted thrombu…

Cardiovascular toxicity of abacavir: a clinical controversy in need of a pharmacological explanation.

2017

: There is a long-lasting controversy surrounding an association between abacavir (ABC) and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in HIV-positive patients. Although differing in their specifics, a number of published cohort studies and clinical trials support such an association, usually relating it to recent exposure to the drug, independently of traditional predisposing factors. However, other clinical trials have failed to reveal such a relation and have pointed to methodological differences to explain discrepancies. Significantly, the controversy has been fueled by the lack of a credible mechanism of action to justify the putative detrimental actions of ABC. There is a myriad of c…

SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19: A genetic, epidemiological, and evolutionary perspective

2020

In less than five months, COVID-19 has spread from a small focus in Wuhan, China, to more than 5 million people in almost every country in the world, dominating the concern of most governments and public health systems. The social and political distresses caused by this epidemic will certainly impact our world for a long time to come. Here, we synthesize lessons from a range of scientific perspectives rooted in epidemiology, virology, genetics, ecology and evolutionary biology so as to provide perspective on how this pandemic started, how it is developing, and how best we can stop it.

In Situ Representations and Access Consciousness in Neural Blackboard or Workspace Architectures

2018

Phenomenal theories of consciousness assert that consciousness is based on specific neural correlates in the brain, which can be separated from all cognitive functions we can perform. If so, the search for robot consciousness seems to be doomed. By contrast, theories of functional or access consciousness assert that consciousness can be studied only with forms of cognitive access, given by cognitive processes. Consequently, consciousness and cognitive access cannot be fully dissociated. Here, the global features of cognitive access of consciousness are discussed based on neural blackboard or (global) workspace architectures, combined with content addressable or "in situ" representations as …

Parasites, pathogens, and other symbionts of copepods.

2021

There is a large diversity of eukaryotic symbionts of copepods, dominated by epizootic protists such as ciliates, and metazoan parasites. Eukaryotic endoparasites, copepod-associated bacteria, and viruses are less well known, partly due to technical limitations. However, new molecular techniques, combined with a range of other approaches, provide a complementary toolkit for understanding the complete symbiome of copepods and how the symbiome relates to their ecological roles, relationships with other biota, and responses to environmental change. In this review we provide the most complete overview of the copepod symbiome to date, including microeukaryotes, metazoan parasites, bacteria, and …

2016

Summary Background Timely assessment of the burden of HIV/AIDS is essential for policy setting and programme evaluation. In this report from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (GBD 2015), we provide national estimates of levels and trends of HIV/AIDS incidence, prevalence, coverage of antiretroviral therapy (ART), and mortality for 195 countries and territories from 1980 to 2015. Methods For countries without high-quality vital registration data, we estimated prevalence and incidence with data from antenatal care clinics and population-based seroprevalence surveys, and with assumptions by age and sex on initial CD4 distribution at infection, CD4 progression rates (probability of progre…

Epidemiology of taeniosis/cysticercosis in Europe, a systematic review: eastern Europe

2018

Background Taenia solium and Taenia saginata are food-borne parasites of global importance. In eastern Europe only fragmented information is available on the epidemiology of these zoonotic parasites in humans and animal populations. In particular for T. solium, on-going transmission is suspected. The aim of this systematic review was to collect the available data and describe the current knowledge on the epidemiology of T. solium and T. saginata in eastern Europe. Methods Literature published in international databases from 1990 to 2017 was systematically reviewed. Furthermore, local sources and unpublished data from national databases were retrieved from local eastern European experts. The…

Integration of animal health and public health surveillance sources to exhaustively inform the risk of zoonosis: An application to echinococcosis in …

2020

The analysis of zoonotic disease risk requires the consideration of both human and animal geo-referenced disease incidence data. Here we show an application of joint Bayesian analyses to the study of echinococcosis granulosus (EG) in the province of Rio Negro, Argentina. We focus on merging passive and active surveillance data sources of animal and human EG cases using joint Bayesian spatial and spatio-temporal models. While similar spatial clustering and temporal trending was apparent, there appears to be limited lagged dependence between animal and human outcomes. Beyond the data quality issues relating to missingness at different times, we were able to identify relations between dog and …

Recommendations for enterovirus diagnostics and characterisation within and beyond Europe

2018

Enteroviruses (EV) can cause severe neurological and respiratory infections, and occasionally lead to devastating outbreaks as previously demonstrated with EV-A71 and EV-D68 in Europe. However, these infections are still often underdiagnosed and EV typing data is not currently collected at European level. In order to improve EV diagnostics, collate data on severe EV infections and monitor the circulation of EV types, we have established European non-polio enterovirus network (ENPEN). First task of this cross-border network has been to ensure prompt and adequate diagnosis of these infections in Europe, and hence we present recommendations for non-polio EV detection and typing based on the co…

Non-primate lentiviral vectors and their applications in gene therapy for ocular disorders

2018

Lentiviruses have a number of molecular features in common, starting with the ability to integrate their genetic material into the genome of non-dividing infected cells. A peculiar property of non-primate lentiviruses consists in their incapability to infect and induce diseases in humans, thus providing the main rationale for deriving biologically safe lentiviral vectors for gene therapy applications. In this review, we first give an overview of non-primate lentiviruses, highlighting their common and distinctive molecular characteristics together with key concepts in the molecular biology of lentiviruses. We next examine the bioengineering strategies leading to the conversion of lentiviruse…