A tale of two clades: monkeypox viruses

Human monkeypox was first recognized outside Africa in 2003 during an outbreak in the USA that was traced to imported monkeypox virus (MPXV)-infected West African rodents. Unlike the smallpox-like disease described in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC; a Congo Basin country), disease in the USA appeared milder. Here, analyses compared clinical, laboratory and epidemiological features of confirmed human monkeypox case-patients, using data from outbreaks in the USA and the Congo Basin, and the results suggested that human disease pathogenicity was associated with the viral strain. Genomic sequencing of USA, Western and Central African MPXV isolates confirmed the existence of two MPXV clades. A comparison of open reading frames between MPXV clades permitted prediction of viral proteins that could cause the observed differences in human pathogenicity between these two clades. Understanding the molecular pathogenesis and clinical and epidemiological properties of MPXV can improve monkeypox prevention and control.

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Abducted children and youth in Lord’s Resistance Army in Northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): mechanisms of indoctrination and control

Conflict and Health ◽

10.1186/s13031-016-0078-5 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Jocelyn TD Kelly ◽

Lindsay Branham ◽

Michele R. Decker

Keyword(s):

Democratic Republic ◽

Children And Youth ◽

Lord's Resistance Army ◽

Republic Of The Congo ◽

And Control ◽

Lord’S Resistance Army

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Operation “Artemis”: The First Autonomous EU-led Operation

Academic and Applied Research in Military and Public ◽

10.32565/aarms.2015.1.11 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 14 (1) ◽

pp. 121-132

Author(s):

János Tomolya

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

Democratic Republic ◽

Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽

European Security ◽

Republic Of Congo ◽

Autonomous Operation ◽

Republic Of The Congo ◽

Operational Constraints ◽

And Control ◽

The Eu

In June 2003, the EU launched Operation “Artemis”, its first military mission outside Europe and independent of NATO, to the Democratic Republic of Congo. While it ultimately received an EU badge, its origin, command and control were French. The objective of Operation “Artemis” was to contribute to the stabilisation of the security conditions in Bunia, capital of Ituri, to improve the humanitarian situation, and to ensure the protection of displaced persons in the refugee camps in Bunia. Its mandate was to provide a short-term interim force for three months until the transition to the reinforced United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC – Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo; English: United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Although the EU can be said to have passed the first “test” of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) mechanisms for the conduct of an autonomous operation, this test was a limited one. Operational constraints were caused by inadequate strategic lift capabilities and the lack of a strategic reserve.

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The changing epidemiology of human monkeypox - a potential threat? A systematic review

10.1101/2021.12.21.21268202 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Eveline Bunge ◽

Bernard Hoet ◽

Liddy Chen ◽

Florian Lienert ◽

Heinz Weidenthaler ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Systematic Review ◽

Democratic Republic ◽

Data Extraction ◽

Grey Literature ◽

Case Fatality ◽

West African ◽

Smallpox Vaccination ◽

Potential Threat ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Republic Of The Congo

Monkeypox, a zoonotic disease caused by an orthopoxvirus, results in a smallpox-like disease in humans. Since monkeypox in humans was initially diagnosed in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), it has spread to other regions of Africa (primarily West and Central), and cases outside Africa have emerged in recent years. We conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed and grey literature on how monkeypox epidemiology has evolved, with particular emphasis on the number of confirmed, probable, and/or possible cases, age at presentation, mortality, and geographical spread. The review is registered with PROSPERO (CRD42020208269). We identified 48 peer-reviewed articles and 18 grey literature sources for data extraction. The number of human monkeypox cases has been on the rise since the 1970s, with the most dramatic increases occurring in the DRC. The median age at presentation has increased from 4 (1970s) to 21 years (2010-2019). There was an overall case fatality rate of 8.7%, with a significant difference between clades - Central African 10.6% (95% CI: 8.4% - 13.3%) vs. West African 3.6% (95% CI: 1.7% - 6.8%). Since 2003, import- and travel-related spread outside of Africa has occasionally resulted in outbreaks. Interactions/activities with infected animals or individuals are risk behaviors associated with acquiring monkeypox. Our review shows an escalation of monkeypox cases, especially in the highly endemic DRC, a spread to other countries, and a growing median age from young children to young adults. These findings may be related to the cessation of smallpox vaccination, which provided some cross-protection against monkeypox, leading to increased human-to-human transmission. The appearance of outbreaks beyond Africa highlights the global relevance of the disease. Increased surveillance and detection of monkeypox cases are essential tools for understanding the continuously changing epidemiology of this resurging disease.

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Who is Responsible for Instability in the Democratic Republic of Congo?

MGIMO Review of International Relations ◽

10.24833/2071-8160-2014-6-39-29-36 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 29-36

Author(s):

G. M. Sidorova

Keyword(s):

Natural Resources ◽

Democratic Republic ◽

Central Government ◽

Democratic Republic Of Congo ◽

Raw Material ◽

Political Crisis ◽

Armed Groups ◽

Long Time ◽

The Usa ◽

Republic Of The Congo

The research focuses on the problem of military-political instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo experiencing continued armed conflict for a long time. Dozens of illegal armed groups both Congolese and foreign origin continue to destabilize situation in the eastern part of the country causing humanitarian disasters. Due to governmental weakness, economic backwardness, chronical lack of finance resources, interethnic conflicts, all-round and widely spread corruption of the authorities, the Congolese government at the moment is not able to overcome scores of problems including the problem of security. Assistanceprovided to the DRC by itspartnerssuch as, first of all, the former metropolitan country Belgium, as well as the USA, Great Britain, the Europe Union and China works only in favourof these country-donors. They are attracted by rich Congolese natural resources which the DRC remaining one of the poorest countries in the world cannot turn to advantage to the full extent because of its economic backwardness. In exchange for so-calleddevelopment programmes, expensive strategic raw material (such as coltan, wolfram, casseterit, cooper, gold, niobium, and other) is being extracted and exported from the country, in addition, often on the inequivalent basis. This is taking place for the reason that numerous mines and open-cast mines are being controlled by different illegal armed groups and not by the central government. Therefore, it turns out that in the context of a military-political crisis, for so-called partners it is more beneficial to pursue their own interests. Furthermore, western ideologists arouse "separatism-oriented" theories similar to "balkanization", in other words, a breakdown of this giant country into several independent states. The Congolese are tremulous to this issue, they try to counter such approachs and defend the territorial integrity of the DRC. However, it is not an easy task. The impediment is unsettled relations with neighbouring countries - Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi which for tens of years exploit illegally natural resources of the DRC and try to lay hold of frontier Congolese territories.

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Sixty years from the first disease description, a novel badnavirus associated with chestnut mosaic disease

Phytopathology ◽

10.1094/phyto-09-20-0420-r ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Armelle Marais ◽

Sergio Murolo ◽

Chantal Faure ◽

Yoann Brans ◽

Clement Larue ◽

...

Keyword(s):

High Throughput Sequencing ◽

Molecular Detection ◽

Phylogenetic Analyses ◽

Epidemiological Studies ◽

Mosaic Disease ◽

Open Reading Frames ◽

Sequence Comparisons ◽

High Incidence ◽

The Usa ◽

Reading Frames

Although the chestnut mosaic disease (ChMD) was described several decades ago, its etiology is still not elucidated. Here, using classical approaches in combination with high throughput sequencing (HTS) techniques, we identify a novel Badnavirus that is a strong etiological candidate for ChMD. Two disease sources from Italy and France were submitted to HTS-based viral indexing. Total RNAs were extracted, ribodepleted and sequenced on an Illumina NextSeq500 (2x150 or 2x 75 nt). In each source, we identified a single contig of about 7.2 kilobases that corresponds to a complete circular viral genome and shares homologies with various badnaviruses. The genomes of the two isolates have an average nucleotide identity of 90.5% with a typical badnaviral genome organization comprising three open reading frames. Phylogenetic analyses and sequence comparisons show that this virus is a novel species for which we propose the name Chestnut mosaic virus (ChMV). Using a newly developed molecular detection test, we systematically detected the virus in symptomatic graft-inoculated indicator plants (chestnut and American oak), as well in chestnut trees presenting typical ChMD symptoms in the field (100% and 87% in France and Italy surveys, respectively). Datamining of publicly available chestnut SRA transcriptomic data allowed the reconstruction of two additional complete ChMV genomes from two Castanea mollissima sources from the USA, as well as ChMV detection in C. dentata from the USA. Preliminary epidemiological studies, performed in France and in Central Eastern Italy, showed that ChMV has a high incidence in some commercial orchards, with a low within-orchard genetic diversity.

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Pygenprop: a Python library for programmatic exploration and comparison of organism genome properties

Bioinformatics ◽

10.1093/bioinformatics/btz522 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 35 (23) ◽

pp. 5063-5065

Author(s):

Lee H Bergstrand ◽

Josh D Neufeld ◽

Andrew C Doxey

Keyword(s):

Data Science ◽

Source Code ◽

Open Reading Frames ◽

Third Party ◽

Partial Support ◽

Biochemical Pathways ◽

Bioinformatics Software ◽

Using Data ◽

Genome Analyses ◽

Reading Frames

Abstract Summary A critical step in comparative genomics is the identification of differences in the presence/absence of encoded biochemical pathways among organisms. Our library, Pygenprop, facilitates these comparisons using data from the Genome Properties database. Pygenprop is written in Python and, unlike existing libraries, it is compatible with a variety of tools in the Python data science ecosystem, such as Jupyter Notebooks for interactive analyses and scikit-learn for machine learning. Pygenprop assigns YES, NO, or PARTIAL support for each property based on InterProScan annotations of open reading frames from an organism’s genome. The library contains classes for representing the Genome Properties database as a whole and methods for detecting differences in property assignments between organisms. As the Genome Properties database grows, we anticipate widespread adoption of Pygenprop for routine genome analyses and integration within third-party bioinformatics software. Availability and implementation Pygenprop is written in Python and is compatible with versions 3.6 or higher. Source code is available under Apache Licence Version 2 at https://github.com/Micromeda/pygenprop. The package can be installed from both PyPi (https://pypi.org/project/pygenprop) and Anaconda (https://anaconda.org/lbergstrand/pygenprop). Documentation is available on Read the Docs (http://pygenprop.rtfd.io/).

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Freshwater diatoms in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: a historical overview of the research and publications

PhytoKeys ◽

10.3897/phytokeys.136.47386 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 136 ◽

pp. 107-125

Author(s):

Christine Cocquyt ◽

Edit Lokele Ndjombo ◽

Simon Tutu Tsamemba ◽

Hippolyte Nshimba Seya wa Malale

Keyword(s):

Democratic Republic ◽

Congo Basin ◽

East African ◽

Dr Congo ◽

African Lakes ◽

Freshwater Diatoms ◽

Republic Of The Congo ◽

Almost All ◽

East African Lakes ◽

Local Research

An overview of the diatom research in the DR Congo is given based on literature data starting in 1938 with the work of Zanon and excluding the East African Lakes as these were already discussed in previous papers. For each literature record the diatom genera mentioned are presented as well as all diatom taxa described from the Congo as new. In total, 106 new taxa were documented, of which Nitzschia with 40 taxa is far the most important genus followed by Navicula s.l. and Pinnularia and with 15 and 13 taxa respectively. Particular attention was paid to the local research of students found in unpublished theses at bachelor, licentiate, master and PhD level. Diatom records in these works are almost all restricted to genus level, although in the last decade an attempt to delimit species can be observed. This accompanies the renewed taxonomic interest in the Congo basin during the last decade. Renewed taxonomic interest can also be seen in the genera: the first period being situated during the lumping period, while more recent works follow the current taxonomic classification, for example Navicula s.l. versus Navicula, Cavinula, Craticula, Diadesmis, Geissleria, Humidophila, Luticola, etc.

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West African Pregnancy Experienced Women's Self-Rated Health and Related Factors: Case of Democratic Republic of the Congo

Health Policy and Management ◽

10.4332/kjhpa.2014.24.1.85 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 24 (1) ◽

pp. 85-91 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Hyeong Il Lee ◽

Eun Woo Nam ◽

Jin Sung Song

Keyword(s):

Democratic Republic ◽

West African ◽

Related Factors ◽

Self Rated Health ◽

Republic Of The Congo

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May Measurement Month 2019: an analysis of blood pressure screening results from the Democratic Republic of the Congo

European Heart Journal Supplements ◽

10.1093/eurheartj/suab050 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 23 (Supplement_B) ◽

pp. B52-B54

Author(s):

Jean-René M’Buyamba-Kabangu ◽

Fortunat K Katamba ◽

Mireille L Ntambwe ◽

Georges N Ngoyi ◽

Trésor M Tshiswaka ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Blood Pressure ◽

Ad Hoc ◽

Democratic Republic ◽

High Rate ◽

Cross Sectional Survey ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Republic Of The Congo ◽

Low Levels ◽

Nationally Representative ◽

And Control

Abstract Hypertension, the foremost cause of global morbi-mortality, is linked with a high mortality from numerous cardiovascular endpoints. The May Measurement Month (MMM) campaign is an annual initiative of the International Society of Hypertension (ISH) to collect information on blood pressure (BP) and other risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in adults. MMM2019 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was an opportunistic cross-sectional survey of volunteers aged ≥18 years that took place in Kinshasa and Mbuji-Mayi after the training of observers to familiarize with the ISH ad hoc methods. We screened 29 857 individuals (mean age: 40 years; 40% female). Hypertension was present in 7624 (25.5%) individuals. Of them, 2520 (33.1%) were aware, 1768 (23.2%) on treatment with 910 (51.5%) controlled BP (systolic BP <140 mmHg and/or diastolic BP <90 mmHg). Of all hypertensives screened, 11.9% had controlled BP. Of all respondents, 16.7% had participated in MMM18 and 60.5% did not have their BP verified during the last year. Fasting, pregnancy, and underweight status were linked with lower BP levels whilst smoking, drinking, antihypertensive medication, previous stroke, diabetes as well as being overweight/obese were associated with higher BP levels. Our results reflect the high rate of hypertension in the DRC with low levels of awareness, treatment, and control. A nationally representative sample is required to establish the nationwide hypertension prevalence.

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