Outcomes in patients of pulmonary tuberculosis treated under RNTCP & follow up after 6 months

Tuberculosis (TB) is, one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide and the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent.This Prospective study was conducted at Santosh medical college Ghaziabad from 1 April 2018 to 30 September 2019. All diagnosed PTB patients above 12yrs were taken. Patients with EPTB, HIV positive, MDR TB, XDR TB were excluded from the study. At the end of study treatment outcome was evaluated.Total of 208 patients diagnosed as tuberculosis were enrolled in the study. 6 patients died during course of study, 10 were treatment failure, 4 were lost to follow-up, 3 transferred out & 1 shifted to private treatment. 184 patients completed treatment successfully. Out of 184, only 152 patients were available for interview at 6 months follow up after completion of treatment. 19 could not be traced, 11 patients refused and 2 died. Out of 152, 110 were asymptomatic, 1 relapsed & rest 41 patients were symptomatic. All symptomatic patients were subjected to Chest X-Ray. Fibrosis was seen on CXR of 30 patients, bronchiectasis was seen in 3 patients, 1 patient had destroyed lung, nothing abnormal detected in 7 patients.Even after successful treatment under RNTCP, these patients need to be followed up as many of them relapse or suffer from sequelae of tuberculosis.

Literature Review: Coinfection in Young Ruminant Livestock—Cryptosporidium spp. and Its Companions

The protozoan Cryptosporidium parvum is one of the major causative pathogens of diarrhoea in young ruminants; therefore, it causes economic losses and impairs animal welfare. Besides C. parvum, there are many other non-infectious and infectious factors, such as rotavirus, Escherichia coli, and Giardia duodenalis, which may lead to diarrhoeic disease in young livestock. Often, more than one infectious agent is detected in affected animals. Little is known about the interactions bet-ween simultaneously occurring pathogens and their potential effects on the course of disease. In this review, a brief overview about pathogens associated with diarrhoea in young ruminants is presented. Furthermore, information about coinfections involving Cryptosporidium is provided.

The Global Economy During COVID-19: A Study on Increasing Disparity

COVID-19 has become an ongoing issue in the present business world. The topic raises confusion and debate over many resolved issues. Not only the developing but also developed countries faced the heat-shock of this micro-infectious agent. But the power to regain and cope with the uncertainty has not been the same everywhere. To some extent, the developed nations have been able to tackle the bad days with their enriched resources, manpower and efficient system whereas this has become a total collapse for the developing and underdeveloped nations. Inefficiency and lack of social security have made life unbearable for the general people in these areas. What is the condition of the vaccination program? Whereas it is costly for the developed nations, it has simply become a dream for the developing nations. No one knows when the world will get a hundred per cent population with vaccination. In this paper we will cover these issues also we will take a look at the ravages of the pandemic in both worlds, as well as identifying the amalgamation of reasons behind the terrible second-wave in India and other developing nations.

Reef Sediments Can Act As a Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease Vector

Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) was first observed in 2014 near Virginia Key in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Field sampling, lab experiments, and modeling approaches have suggested that reef sediments may play a role in SCTLD transmission, though a positive link has not been tested experimentally. We conducted an ex situ transmission assay using a statistically-independent disease apparatus to test whether reef sediments can transmit SCTLD in the absence of direct contact between diseased and healthy coral tissue. We evaluated two methods of sediment inoculation: batch inoculation of sediments collected from southeast Florida using whole colonies of diseased Montastraea cavernosa, and individual inoculations of sediments following independent, secondary infections of ∼5 cm2 coral fragments. Healthy fragments of the coral species Orbicella faveolata and M. cavernosa were exposed to these diseased sediment treatments, as well as direct disease contact and healthy sediment controls. SCTLD transmission was observed for both batch and individual diseased sediment inoculation treatments, albeit with lower proportions of infected individuals as compared to disease contact controls. The time to onset of lesions was significantly different between species and among disease treatments, with the most striking infections occurring in the individual diseased sediment treatment in under 24 h. Following infection, tissue samples were confirmed for the presence of SCTLD signs via histological examination, and sediment subsamples were analyzed for microbial community variation between treatments, identifying 16 SCTLD indicator taxa in sediments associated with corals experiencing tissue loss. This study demonstrated that reef sediments can indeed transmit SCTLD through indirect exposure between diseased and healthy corals, and adds credence to the assertion that SCTLD transmission occurs via an infectious agent or agents. This study emphasizes the critical need to understand the roles that sediment microbial communities and coastal development activities may have on the persistence of SCTLD throughout the endemic zone, especially in the context of management and conservation strategies in Florida and the wider Caribbean.

Emerging Parasitic Protists: The Case of Perkinsea

The last century has witnessed an increasing rate of new disease emergence across the world leading to permanent loss of biodiversity. Perkinsea is a microeukaryotic parasitic phylum composed of four main lineages of parasitic protists with broad host ranges. Some of them represent major ecological and economical threats because of their geographically invasive ability and pathogenicity (leading to mortality events). In marine environments, three lineages are currently described, the Parviluciferaceae, the Perkinsidae, and the Xcellidae, infecting, respectively, dinoflagellates, mollusks, and fish. In contrast, only one lineage is officially described in freshwater environments: the severe Perkinsea infectious agent infecting frog tadpoles. The advent of high-throughput sequencing methods, mainly based on 18S rRNA assays, showed that Perkinsea is far more diverse than the previously four described lineages especially in freshwater environments. Indeed, some lineages could be parasites of green microalgae, but a formal nature of the interaction needs to be explored. Hence, to date, most of the newly described aquatic clusters are only defined by their environmental sequences and are still not (yet) associated with any host. The unveiling of this microbial black box presents a multitude of research challenges to understand their ecological roles and ultimately to prevent their most negative impacts. This review summarizes the biological and ecological traits of Perkinsea—their diversity, life cycle, host preferences, pathogenicity, and highlights their diversity and ubiquity in association with a wide range of hosts.

The molecular evolution of Dabie bandavirus (Phenuiviridae: Bandavirus: Dabie bandavirus), the agent of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome

Since the Dabie bandavirus (DBV; former SFTS virus, SFTSV) was identified, the epidemics of severe fever with thrombocytopenic syndrome (SFTS) caused by this virus have occurred in several countries in East Asia. The rapid increase in incidence indicates that this infectious agent has a pandemic potential and poses an imminent global public health threat.The analysis of molecular evolution of SFTS agent that includes its variants isolated in China, Japan and South Korea was performed in this review. The evolution rate of DBV and the estimated dates of existence of the common ancestor were ascertained, and the possibility of reassortation was demonstrated.The evolutionary rates of DBV genome segments were estimated to be 2.28 × 10-4 nucleotides/site/year for S-segment, 2.42 × 10-4 for M-segment, and 1.19 × 10-4 for L-segment. The positions of positive selection were detected in the viral genome.Phylogenetic analyses showed that virus may be divided into two clades, containing six different genotypes. The structures of phylogenetic trees for S-, M- and L-segments showed that all genotypes originate from the common ancestor.Data of sequence analysis suggest that DBV use several mechanisms to maintain the high level of its genetic diversity. Understanding the phylogenetic factors that determine the virus transmission is important for assessing the epidemiological characteristics of the disease and predicting its possible outbreaks.

Surfactant Protein-A Function: Knowledge Gained From SP-A Knockout Mice

Pulmonary surfactant proteins have many roles in surfactant- related functions and innate immunity. One of these proteins is the surfactant protein A (SP-A) that plays a role in both surfactant-related processes and host defense and is the focus in this review. SP-A interacts with the sentinel host defense cell in the alveolus, the alveolar macrophage (AM), to modulate its function and expression profile under various conditions, as well as other alveolar epithelial cells such as the Type II cell. Via these interactions, SP-A has an impact on the alveolar microenvironment. SP-A is also important for surfactant structure and function. Much of what is understood of the function of SP-A and its various roles in lung health has been learned from SP-A knockout (KO) mouse experiments, as reviewed here. A vast majority of this work has been done with infection models that are bacterial, viral, and fungal in nature. Other models have also been used, including those of bleomycin-induced lung injury and ozone-induced oxidative stress either alone or in combination with an infectious agent, bone marrow transplantation, and other. In addition, models investigating the effects of SP-A on surfactant components or surfactant structure have contributed important information. SP-A also appears to play a role in pathways involved in sex differences in response to infection and/or oxidative stress, as well as at baseline conditions. To date, this is the first review to provide a comprehensive report of the functions of SP-A as learned through KO mice.

Long-Reads-Based Metagenomics in Clinical Diagnosis With a Special Focus on Fungal Infections

Identification of the causative infectious agent is essential in the management of infectious diseases, with the ideal diagnostic method being rapid, accurate, and informative, while remaining cost-effective. Traditional diagnostic techniques rely on culturing and cell propagation to isolate and identify the causative pathogen. These techniques are limited by the ability and the time required to grow or propagate an agent in vitro and the facts that identification based on morphological traits are non-specific, insensitive, and reliant on technical expertise. The evolution of next-generation sequencing has revolutionized genomic studies to generate more data at a cheaper cost. These are divided into short- and long-read sequencing technologies, depending on the length of reads generated during sequencing runs. Long-read sequencing also called third-generation sequencing emerged commercially through the instruments released by Pacific Biosciences and Oxford Nanopore Technologies, although relying on different sequencing chemistries, with the first one being more accurate both platforms can generate ultra-long sequence reads. Long-read sequencing is capable of entirely spanning previously established genomic identification regions or potentially small whole genomes, drastically improving the accuracy of the identification of pathogens directly from clinical samples. Long-read sequencing may also provide additional important clinical information, such as antimicrobial resistance profiles and epidemiological data from a single sequencing run. While initial applications of long-read sequencing in clinical diagnosis showed that it could be a promising diagnostic technique, it also has highlighted the need for further optimization. In this review, we show the potential long-read sequencing has in clinical diagnosis of fungal infections and discuss the pros and cons of its implementation.

The Prevalence of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Using Gene Xpert Among Tuberculosis Suspected Patients in Gedeo Zone, Southern Ethiopia

Background Tuberculosis (TB) is a communicable disease remains a major global health problem and the leading cause of death from a single infectious agent. Even though many of the WHO recommended TB control strategy was implemented; there is still a major gap in TB case detection and treatment. This study aimed to determine the prevalence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis among presumptive TB patients in Gedeo Zone, Southern Ethiopia. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on 384 TB suspected patients in Gedeo Zone from February to July 2021. Data were collected using a pretested structured questionnaire. Laboratory examination was processed using Xpert-MTB/RIF assay. Data entry was made using Epi info version 7 and analyzed by SPSS version 24. Logistic regression models were used to determine the risk factors. Results Out of 384 study participants suspected with TB, M tuberculosis was isolated from 103 giving an overall prevalence of 26.8%. Males (AOR) = 1.95; 95% CI 1.56-2.65, P=0.01) were more likely to develop TB than females. Study participants who were illiterate (AOR 2.10; 95% CI 1.17-2.51, p=0.014) were more likely to develop TB than the educated one. Cigarette smokers (AOR 2.89; 95% CI 2.10-3.84, p=0.01), khat chewers (AOR 2.86; 95% CI 1.28-3.79, p=0.01), vaccination (AOR 0.52; 95% CI 0.21-0.88, p=0.02), close contact (AOR 3.42; 95% CI 2.24-4.50, p=0.01) and being positive for HIV (AOR 2.01; 95% CI 1.07-3.52, 0.01) were more likely to develop TB. Conclusion Despite implementation of national and international TB control strategies, TB still remains one of the major public health problems in the country especially in the study area. The high prevalence of MTB was reported different risk groups. Early case detection and management of TB should be given special attention to strengthen and an appropriate control and prevention methods to reduce the emergence and increasing of MTB cases.