While South Americans are underrepresented in human genomic diversity studies, Brazil has been a classical model for population genetics studies on admixture. We present the results of the EPIGEN Brazil Initiative, the most comprehensive up-to-date genomic analysis of any Latin-American population. A population-based genomewide analysis of 6,487 individuals was performed in the context of worldwide genomic diversity to elucidate how ancestry, kinship, and inbreeding interact in three populations with different histories from the Northeast (African ancestry: 50%), Southeast, and South (both with European ancestry >70%) of Brazil. We showed that ancestry-positive assortative mating permeated Brazilian history. We traced European ancestry in the Southeast/South to a wider European/Middle Eastern region with respect to the Northeast, where ancestry seems restricted to Iberia. By developing an approximate Bayesian computation framework, we infer more recent European immigration to the Southeast/South than to the Northeast. Also, the observed low Native-American ancestry (6-8%) was mostly introduced in different regions of Brazil soon after the European Conquest. We broadened our understanding of the African diaspora, the major destination of which was Brazil, by revealing that Brazilians display two within-Africa ancestry components: one associated with non-Bantu/western Africans (more evident in the Northeast and African Americans) and one associated with Bantu/eastern Africans (more present in the Southeast/ South). Furthermore, the whole-genome analysis of 30 individuals (42-fold deep coverage) shows that continental admixture rather than local post-Columbian history is the main and complex determinant of the individual amount of deleterious genotypes.Latin America | population genetics | Salvador SCAALA | Bambuí Cohort Study of Ageing | Pelotas Birth Cohort Study L atin Americans, who are classical models of the effects of admixture in human populations (1, 2), remain underrepresented in studies of human genomic diversity, notwithstanding recent studies (3, 4). Indeed, no large genome-wide study on admixed South Americans has been conducted so far. Brazil is the largest and most populous Latin-American country. Its over 200 million inhabitants are the product of post-Columbian admixture between Amerindians, Europeans colonizers or immigrants, and African slaves (1). Interestingly, Brazil was the destiny of nearly 40% of the African diaspora, receiving seven times more slaves than the United States (nearly 4 million vs. 600,000).Here, we present results of the EPIGEN Brazil Initiative (https:// epigen.grude.ufmg.br), the most comprehensive up-to-date genomic analysis of a Latin-American population. We genotyped nearly 2.2 million SNPs in 6,487 admixed individuals from three population-based cohorts from different regions with distinct demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds and sequenced the whole genome of 30 individuals from these populations at an To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: edutars@ic...

The recent emergence and re-emergence of viral infections transmitted by vectors—Zika, chikungunya, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, West Nile, yellow fever and others—is a cause for international concern. Using as examples Zika, chikungunya and dengue, we summarise current knowledge on characteristics of the viruses and their transmission, clinical features, laboratory diagnosis, burden, history, possible causes of the spread and the expectation for future epidemics. Arboviruses are transmitted by mosquitoes, are of difficult diagnosis, can have surprising clinical complications and cause severe burden. The current situation is complex, because there is no vaccine for Zika and chikungunya and no specific treatment for the three arboviruses. Vector control is the only comprehensive solution available now and this remains a challenge because up to now this has not been very effective. Until we develop new technologies of control mosquito populations, the globalised and urbanised world we live in will remain vulnerable to the threat of successive arbovirus epidemics.

SummaryBackground The microcephaly epidemic, which started in Brazil in 2015, was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by WHO in 2016. We report the preliminary results of a case-control study investigating the association between microcephaly and Zika virus infection during pregnancy.

Brazilian Ministry of Health, Pan American Health Organization, and Enhancing Research Activity in Epidemic Situations.

On February 1, 2016, The World Health Organization declared the ongoing Zika crisis an emergency and that, although not yet scientifically proven, the link between the virus and growing numbers of microcephaly cases was "strongly suspected." However, the causal relationship between zika and microcephaly is not universally accepted. Public Health Implications. The current situation with regard to Zika is not encouraging, because there is no vaccine, no treatment, and no good serological test, and vector control remains a challenge.

Affected nations need to prepare to provide complex and costly multidisciplinary care that children diagnosed with this new congenital syndrome will require.

No abstract

In recent years the use of case-control designs has been extended to the study of common diseases. It has been shown that the rare disease assumption is not necessary, and that by a suitable choice of sampling scheme for controls, it is possible to obtain direct estimates of relative risk and relative rate, instead of relying on the odds ratio as an indirect estimate. The majority of papers addressing these issues are theoretical, and the arguments have been couched in mathematical terms. As such they are not readily accessible to many practising epidemiologists. This paper summarizes the discussion in a simplified manner. It describes the three different measures of relative incidence, namely the relative risk, the relative rate and the odds ratio, together with their corresponding case-control designs. The discussion is extended to show that the choice of the appropriate measure of relative incidence depends on the mode of action of the risk factor, as well as on characteristics of disease. We propose a classification scheme comprising five different categories of situation, and make recommendations regarding study designs for each.