Oswaldo Cruz Foundation

About: Oswaldo Cruz Foundation is a facility organization based out in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Trypanosoma cruzi. The organization has 18673 authors who have published 36752 publications receiving 802378 citations. The organization is also known as: Fundação Oswaldo Cruz & FIOCRUZ.

Characteristics of Infants With Severe Retinopathy of Prematurity in Countries With Low, Moderate, and High Levels of Development: Implications for Screening Programs

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a potentially avoidable cause of blindness in children. The proportion of blindness as a result of ROP varies greatly among countries depending on their level of development, being influenced by the availability of neonatal care, neonatal outcomes, and whether effective screening and treatment programs are in place. The objective of this study was to compare characteristics of premature infants who developed severe ROP between 1996 and 2002 in highly developed countries with less developed countries. METHODS: This was an observational study. A questionnaire was completed by ophthalmologists in countries with low, moderate, and high development rankings (3 highly developed countries and from 10 less well-developed countries) who screen for ROP in which they supplied birth weights and gestational ages (GAs) of infants who were treated for threshold ROP or identified with more advanced stages of the disease. Birth weights and GAs of infants with severe ROP were measured. RESULTS: The mean birth weights of infants from highly developed countries ranged from 737 to 763 g compared with values ranging from 903 to 1527 g in less developed countries. Mean GAs of infants from highly developed countries ranged from 25.3 to 25.6 weeks compared with 26.3 to 33.5 weeks in less developed countries. A total of 13.0% of 1091 infants from poorly developed countries exceeded United Kingdom screening criteria; 3.6% exceeded a criteria of <34 weeks' GA and/or <1750 g birth weight. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that larger, more mature infants are developing severe ROP in countries with low/moderate levels of development compared with highly developed countries. ROP screening programs need to use criteria that are appropriate for their local population.

DynaMut: predicting the impact of mutations on protein conformation, flexibility and stability

Abstract: Proteins are highly dynamic molecules, whose function is intrinsically linked to their molecular motions. Despite the pivotal role of protein dynamics, their computational simulation cost has led to most structure-based approaches for assessing the impact of mutations on protein structure and function relying upon static structures. Here we present DynaMut, a web server implementing two distinct, well established normal mode approaches, which can be used to analyze and visualize protein dynamics by sampling conformations and assess the impact of mutations on protein dynamics and stability resulting from vibrational entropy changes. DynaMut integrates our graph-based signatures along with normal mode dynamics to generate a consensus prediction of the impact of a mutation on protein stability. We demonstrate our approach outperforms alternative approaches to predict the effects of mutations on protein stability and flexibility (P-value < 0.001), achieving a correlation of up to 0.70 on blind tests. DynaMut also provides a comprehensive suite for protein motion and flexibility analysis and visualization via a freely available, user friendly web server at http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/dynamut/.

A saúde e seus determinantes sociais

Abstract: RESUMO Este artigo busca analisar as relacoes entre saude e seus determinantes sociais, apresentando inicialmente o conceito de determinantes sociais de saude (DSS) e uma breve evolucao historica dos diversos paradigmas explicativos do processo saude/doenca no âmbito das sociedades, desde meados do seculo XIX. Em seguida sao discutidos os principais avancos e desafios no estudo dos DSS, com enfase em novos enfoques e marcos de referencia explicativos das relacoes ente os diversos niveis de DSS e a situacao de saude. Com base nesses estudos e marcos explicativos, discutese, em seguida, uma serie de possibilidades de intervencoes de politicas e programas voltados para o combate as iniquidades de saude geradas pelos DSS. Finalmente, sao apresentados os objetivos, linhas de atuacao e principais atividades da Comissao Nacional sobre Determinantes Sociais da Saude, criada em marco de 2006, com o objetivo de promover estudos sobre os DSS, recomendar politicas para a promocao da equidade em saude e mobilizar setores da sociedade para o debate e posicionamento em torno dos DSS e do enfrentamento das iniquidades de saude.

An amplicon-based sequencing framework for accurately measuring intrahost virus diversity using PrimalSeq and iVar

Abstract: How viruses evolve within hosts can dictate infection outcomes; however, reconstructing this process is challenging. We evaluate our multiplexed amplicon approach, PrimalSeq, to demonstrate how virus concentration, sequencing coverage, primer mismatches, and replicates influence the accuracy of measuring intrahost virus diversity. We develop an experimental protocol and computational tool, iVar, for using PrimalSeq to measure virus diversity using Illumina and compare the results to Oxford Nanopore sequencing. We demonstrate the utility of PrimalSeq by measuring Zika and West Nile virus diversity from varied sample types and show that the accumulation of genetic diversity is influenced by experimental and biological systems.