Tropical Medicine - Science topic

Here’s what I’ve done: when I have a pub that is in my maiden name, I have listed it and added my married name in brackets, as in Francis Harper [Barchi]. I’ve never encountered any difficulties handing the problem of attribution in this way.

In developed countries, a variety of safety measures ensures a low risk of transfusion-transmitted infections. These safety measures include donor selection (limiting imported and window infections); skin disinfection and diversion bags (limiting bacterial contamination during blood donation); the screening of donations (enabling timely detection of HBV, HCV, HIV, and Treponema pallidum); specific processing (such as leukodepletion, pathogen reduction, and inactivation, which remove or kill certain pathogens); quarantine plasma (preventing window infections); bacterial culturing (detecting contaminated platelets); and post-donation and post-transfusion notification (respectively, enabling donor- and recipient-triggered look-back procedures, which identify infected recipients).

Link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5732909/#:~:text=These%20safety%20measures%20include%20donor,)%3B%20specific%20processing%20(such%20as

Indigenous knowledge, defined by UNESCO as “the understandings, skills and philosophies developed by societies with long histories of interaction with their natural surroundings”, is increasingly — if belatedly — being recognized as making a significant contribution to the research endeavor. However, it is poorly supported by the current research infrastructure, which was developed to serve the needs of the global North, especially in the sciences...

Dr Katharina Ruckstuhl of the University of Otago, New Zealand, gave a powerful account of this in her recent NISO Plus keynote, Research Infrastructure for the Pluriverse, as well as sharing her thoughts on how we can can implement research infrastructure processes that support pluriversal approaches...

Dear Anisetti,

I would strongly urge you to freeze-dry the fungal cultures yourself or send them to a research colleague that can do this for you. This will preserve the cultures for long periods of time when simply maintained in a freezer after freeze drying.

Best wishes, Dan

Thanks for all the tips! This was extremely helpful

Thanks for all the tips! This was extremely helpful

Thanks for all the tips! This was extremely helpful

For usutuvirus there is a greater risk in North America by the vectors, however the spread could happen from North America to South America (in the opposite way that Chik and Zika)

Sorry M. A. A. Al- Fatlawi this link does not work. Is it for a PhD position? I'm already a PhD student at the IIB, Uni of Liverpool

Karuna D Sagili Yes here it is

You might want to consider "Emerging Infectious Diseases" (CDC), and "International Health" (RSTMH).

Oral treatment is not the consensus for the treatment of human myiasis, and studies must be done to consolidate this modality of treatment. Ivermectin is the most commonly used drug for human infestation. Much of the experience with ivermectin came from the veterinary use of this drug. Its use may cause a migration of the larva out of the skin. One study reported a case of complete resolution with a dose of 200 μg per kg .

Even though no specific treatment is valid for the treatment of intestinal myiasis, purgatives, albendazole, mebendazole, and levamizole were reported to cure the disease in some patients. Mesalazine has been used as an anti-inflammatory agent. Colonoscopy may have diagnostic and therapeutic functions

You can find here an example of a FDA-approved compound (novobiocin) that our group has repurposed as potent in-vitro and in-vivo Zika virus inhibitor:

Also, our web server for blind docking calculations can be of help in this context:

George Duke Mukoro,

We should not generalize that, there is a part of facts around. These facts come from the presence of flavonoids, the most common is black tea,  that people with diabetes experienced low blood sugar when they drinking (without sugar). 

Best regards

Journal of Medical Research and Innovation

Hello. you can request a full-text from

How to validate the  anti diabetic plant extract source by in vitro menthod, without using animal model ?

My dear friends. I think that high commited blood transfusion specialists like ourselves are actually paying attention very carefully and closely about the insurgence of this quite unknown virus. There is no doubt that it is very important, particularly for pregnant women, and for them, all attention must be driven from authorities in order to avoid new cases. But most importantly, if we do not fight the real culprit, the mosquito, we will certainly lose not only this battle, but the whole war. Unfortunately, this I haven´t seen not only in my country, but in several places.  This is a great forum for discussion. Regards

As far as I'm aware, the recent detection of Zika virus within saliva is the first reporting of its kind - very little is known at this stage as to if ZKV infection can be transmitted from human to human through saliva itself, and further testing would be required to determine this.

Relating back to your question, I imagine that it would depend on what the viral load is within saliva compared to serum/traditional sample techniques, and if this is a high enough titre to be detected consistently. 

Another thing to bear in mind is that viral RNA tends to be easier to detect in serum during the first 7 days of illness; viremia decreases over time. We would need to determine at what stage of zika infection viremia is detectable in saliva. It would indeed be interesting to see if testing of saliva samples result in a higher sensitivity/detection rate compared to traditional serum testing by RT-PCR. 

Very interesting question!

I agree with Sergei. Beyond van den Bosch hypothesis, other usual environmental factors of oncogenesis including air, water, and food pollutants, have to be considered. I am not sure if there is spatially resolved data from Mauritius, but close to our center in La Réunion we have a GIS and remote sensing station who monitors the south western Indian Ocean area (including Mauritius). For further, you may contact Vincent Herbreteau in my contact list who is a researcher in geography of health whose team (UMR Espace-Dev) is also based in Latin America (French Guiana) and Pacific (New Caledonia). He may respond to your question.

 I'm semi-retired so have the luxury of ignoring impact factors, but my younger colleagues don't have that choice because university administrators and other gatekeepers have become obsessed with supposedly "objective" indicators of "quality." It's perverse, unfair, and stupid, but it's reality.

An excellent question. If this really is a new introduction and an efficient enzootic cycle can be established (or an urban tranmission cycle with just mosquitoes and humans) then this could be the tip of the iceberg in terms of cases.

I would also be interested to know whether this really is the emergence of Zika in Brazil or whether this virus has been circulating previously with cases remaining undiagnosed (due to the relatively mild course of disease) or misdiagnosed (due to clinical similarity with other endemic arboviruses such as dengue, Mayaro, Oropouche etc). If this is the case then geographic niche is probably already set and expansion throughout the Americas is less likely.

Hi Achini,

Please find the following protocol for tissue staining. I am forwarding you both colorimetric and fluorometric staining protocol.

Best Luck.

I have copied this answer from my answer of you other questions.  I have also attached a general protocol for rodent oral gavage.

This is super easy to do. You can use a regular dissection microscope and dissect the beetles (usually Tenebrio molitor for H. diminuta) in a watch glass with Tyrode's solution. Remove the thorax and a small portion of the posterior abdomen. You can then take a Pasteur pipette and flush out the cavity with the Tyrode's solution, and that will bring out most of the cysticercoids. You can then use a rodent oral gavage syringe to pipette up the required number of cysticercoids and clean Tyrode's solution to equal 100 microliters. Then anesthetize your rats and administer via oral gavage. Let me know if this helps.

The Koch´s postulates are still important to answer your question. Single identification of a rare species does neither confirm nor falsify the causative role in disease. If a rare species is identified I would at least try to confirm the presence in this patient in an independent clinical material. This would add to fulfill postulate 1.

What is the immunological status of the patients? Are there specific risk factors facilitating dermatophytoses in the patients? It might be, that these organisms are opportunistic and cause disease only in specific groups of patients.   

A slight addendum to my earlier answer. If you wish to do any molecular analysis later on with your samples then make sure you archive a small unfixed aliquot of your sample at either -80 or +4 deg C. Molecular methods don't like strong fixatives.

Dear Ravi,

To my knowledge there is not any such first or second line treatment for malaria as such. However there is treatment guideline with respect to the type of parasite found to be present in malaria fever patient as well as according to the complication/severity status.

You may like to refer the recent treatmment guideline issued by NVBDCP in 2013

http://www.nvbdcp.gov.in/Doc/National-Drug-Policy-2013.pdf

Dear all,

Personally, I never find any kind of research supporting that systemic treatment is useful to prevent future mucosal involvement. This suggestion is basically based on hypothetical concerns about the possibility of further ML involvement but any study was done yet to probe this hypothesis. From ethical and logistically points of view, this kind of studies wil be almost imposible (just follow a group of people with CL to find the rate of ML progression vs. follow a group with CL + treatment and find the rate of ML, having in consideration that median time for mL development is as a median time 2 years and even more than that). From my clinical experience, I had the chance to see both cases: people with prior Sb5+ treatment for CL who developed ML and the oposite. I can share with you if you're interested, a retrospective study to picture the clinical characteristics of 300 ML cases which were presented in the last ASTMH (latebreaker, unfortunately not available at AJTMH website), in which however, we found that systemic treatment in prior CL was associated with lower risk of development of extensive disease, which actually is a different issue.

I can say however that there are interesting studies associating ML development with genetic susceptibility. In my clinical experience I found that ML was more frequent and severe in non-native (from endemic regions) people than natives. The same issue was described in Bolivia, a country extremely similar with Peru.

This is a really interesting question. I was interested to evaluate the role of LRV in this dissemination and nothing clear was found at least in human cases (my research is actually in writting but I'll present the results in this ICID, 2014). A brazilian study found the same results.

Best regards,

Braulio

UAE has been recently certified by the WHO as a malaria-free country. However, re-introduction of imported malaria may still pose a challenge.

Any body has worked on the IgA in dengue

I would also suggest CDC as a very usable tool. It´s ease of use would make it ideal for students.

The tissue samples (containing, for example, metacercariae of some trematode) can be immersed in a digestion solution (0.85% NaCl in distilled water with 1% pepsin and 1% HCl, pH 2) for one hour at 37 °C.

It is possibile to get a more detailed outline? You know: in all Europe Rubella Vaccine is mandatory and we're experiencing a significant resurgence of malaria in Mediterranean regions (at the moment, Albania and Peloponnesian Greece)...