Stool samples containing Giardia duodenalis cysts were collected from 95 primary-school children in central Cuba, and preserved by storing at -20 degrees C in 70% ethanol. Clinical data were collected for each child. Although 57% of the children were asymptomatic, the remaining 43% each reported between one and three symptoms. Following cyst quantification and isolation, molecular analyses were attempted on all cyst isolates, with the focus on the parasite's beta-giardin and glutamate-dehydrogenase (gdh) genes. Unfortunately, the cyst-preservation procedure appeared to have a deleterious effect on the cysts, since genotyping data could only be obtained for 20 of the 95 isolates. These data indicated, however, an approximately equal distribution between assemblage A (nine isolates) and assemblage B (11 isolates). Children found to be excreting relatively large numbers of cysts were more likely to be symptomatic than children who were excreting fewer cysts, and children with Giardia isolates from assemblage B were more likely to have symptomatic infections than children with isolates from assemblage A. Although considerable sequence variability was seen in the assemblage-B isolates, the assemblage-A isolates were relatively genetically homogeneous. This is the first publication from the Caribbean in which the Giardia genotypes circulating within the population have been identified, the first from the Americas providing information on associations between clinical presentation and the assemblage of the infecting Giardia, and the first to indicate that levels of cyst excretion may have clinical significance.
What is osteobiography good for? The last generation of archaeologists fought to overcome the traditional assumption that archaeology is merely ancillary to history, a substitute to be used when written sources are defective; it is now widely acknowledged that material histories and textual histories tell equally valid and complementary stories about the past. Yet the traditional assumption hangs on implicitly in biography: osteobiography is used to fill the gaps in the textual record rather than as a primary source in its own right. In this article we compare the textual biographies and material biographies of two thirteenth-century townsfolk from medieval England-Robert Curteis, attested in legal records, and "Feature 958," excavated archaeologically and studied osteobiographically. As the former shows, textual biographies of ordinary people mostly reveal a few traces of financial or legal transactions. Interpreting these traces, in fact, implicitly presumes a history of the body. Osteobiography reveals a different kind of history, the history of the body as a locus of appearance and social identity, work, health and experience. For all but a few textually rich individuals, osteobiography provides a fuller and more human biography. Moreover, textual visibility is deeply biased by class and gender; osteobiography offers particular promise for Marxist and feminist understandings of the past. ¿Para qué sirve la osteobiografía? La última generación de arqueólogos luchó para superar la suposición tradicional de que la arqueología es meramente (accesoria) a la historia, una sustituta que se puede utilizar cuando las fuentes escritas son deficientes. Ahora es ampliamente reconocido que las historias materiales y las historias textuales igualmente válido y complementario del pasado. Sin embargo, la suposición tradicional continúa implícitamente en la biografía: se utiliza la osteobiografía para llenar los vacíos en el historial textual en vez de utilizarla como fuente primaria por derecho propio. En esta investigación comparamos las biografías textuales y biografías materiales de dos ciudadanos de la Inglaterra medieval del siglo XIII-Robert Cuteis, documentado en registros legales, y "Feature 958", excavada arqueologicamente y examinada osteobiograficamente. Como demuestra la primera, biografías textuales de la gente común sobre todo revelan algunos rastros de transacciones financieras o legales. La interpretación de estos rastros de hecho presume implícitamente una historia del cuerpo. La osteobiografía revela una clase de historia distinta, la historia del cuerpo como un sitio que contiene información sobre apariencia e identidad social, trabajo, salud y experiencia. Para todos aparte de algunos
Molecular and epidemiological studies of Cryptosporidium infections amongst 28 Cuban children (aged 2-8 years) with diarrhoea are described. As few of the younger infected children but most of the older infected children had been breastfed, short-term protection from maternal antibodies passed to infants during breastfeeding may result in a lack of cryptosporidial infection in infancy. This protection of breastfeeding children may, however, result in such children developing less anti-Cryptosporidium immunity of their own (than their bottle-fed counterparts), so that, by school age, the children who had been breastfed are those most likely to be found infected. In the present study, in contrast with the observations made during a previous study of cryptosporidiosis in Cuban children, vomiting was rare (7%) whereas abdominal pain was common (57%). These differences in expression of symptoms between studies may be age-related. As seen in other studies from similar countries, including those of the Caribbean and Latin America, C. hominis was found to predominate, the results of the successful molecular analyses revealing 10 C. hominis infections but no C. parvum. Subgenotyping (at the gp60 locus) indicated that the C. hominis infections included a wide range of subtypes, with isolates from three subtype families (Ia, Ib and Id) being detected.
ObjectivesTrabecular structure is frequently used to differentiate between highly divergent mechanical environments. Less is known regarding the response of the structural properties to more subtle behavioral differences, as the range of intrapopulation variation in trabecular architecture is rarely studied. Examining the extent to which lower limb trabecular architecture varies when inferred mobility levels and environment are consistent between groups within a relatively homogenous population may aid in the contextualization of interpopulation differences, improve detectability of sexual dimorphism in trabecular structure, and improve our understanding of trabecular bone functional adaptation.Materials and methodsThe study sample was composed of adult individuals from three high/late medieval cemeteries from Cambridge (10th–16th c.), a hospital (n = 57), a parish cemetery (n = 44) and a friary (n = 14). Trabecular architecture was quantified in the epiphyses of the femur and tibia, using high resolution computed tomography.ResultsThe parish individuals had the lowest bone volume fraction and trabecular thickness in most regions. Multiple sex differences were observed, but the patterns were not consistent across volumes of interest.DiscussionDifferences between the three groups highlight the great variability of trabecular bone architecture, even within a single sedentary population. This indicates that trabecular bone may be used in interpreting subtle behavioral differences, and suggests that multiple archaeological sites need to be studied to characterize structural variation on a population level. Variation in sex and group differences across anatomical locations further demonstrates the site‐specificity in trabecular bone functional adaptation, which might explain why little consistent sexual dimorphism has been reported previously.
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