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Women living in rural areas of Amazonas - the riverine - have difficulty accessing adequate health care, aggravating their vulnerability in the face of various pathological processes, such as cervical cancer and sexually transmitted infections. Strategies that expand coverage of screening and early diagnosis are welcome. To evaluate the prevalence of Human Papillomavirus (HPV) and Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) in riverside women from Coari City, Amazonas, in samples obtained by self-collection and to verify the acceptance of this method among the participants. Fifty eight riverside communities were visited, with a “house-to-house” approach. The samples were obtained with a COARI® brush (Kolplast®) and the diagnosis of pathogens was made by Polymerase Chain Reaction. Four hundred and nineteen sexually active women aged between 18 and 70 years old (34.4 ± 12.1) participated in the study. The prevalence of CT in this population sample was 1.1% and that of HPV was 15.7%. We observed a low prevalence of CT and a high prevalence of HPV among participating women, in addition to a good acceptance of self-collection among them.

The caparari (Pseudoplatystoma tigrinum) is a widely distributed species in the Amazon Basin. It has a high market value and it is commonly consumed by the local population. In order to protect the species from possible overfishing, there is a need for a better understanding of the population diversity, since knowledge regarding its biology is scarce, which makes it difficult to monitor. Seven microsatellite loci (simple sequence repeats-SSR) for the species were isolated and characterized in 46 individuals which were sampled in four locations from the Madeira River, in the Brazilian Amazon. The number of alleles per locus ranged from three to eleven. The observed and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0,326 to 0,705 and 0,322 to 0,758, respectively. No linkage disequilibrium between pairs of loci was detected. The seven microsatellite loci were additionally used for inter-specific amplification in other four species of Pseudoplatystoma. Therefore, this study contributes to the first molecular species-specific SSR markers, which can be used as a new tool for estimating the genetic variability of P. tigrinum and has potential for application in population-related studies.