This is the first study to demonstrate that ectosomes that are shed from infected neutrophils influence mycobactericidal activity in macrophages in vitro, suggesting that these microvesicles have biological significance. Nevertheless, major gaps in our knowledge of microvesicle biology remain.

EAI may be endemic at a low frequency in Brazil, with some clades indicating increased fitness with respect to this population.

Abstract:Human tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by bacteria from the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC). Although Spoligotyping and MIRU-VNTR are standard methodology in MTBC genetic epidemiology, recent studies suggest that Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) are advantageous in phylogenetics and strain identification. In this work we use a set of 79 SNPs to characterize 1915 MTBC isolates from Portugal and 141 from Northeast Brazil. All Brazilian samples and a subset of 111 Portuguese isolates were further characterized using Spolygotyping. Phylogenetic analysis against a reference set revealed that about 95% of the isolates in both populations were singly attributed to bacterial lineage 4. Within this lineage, the most frequent strain groups in both Portugal and Brazil were LAM, followed by Haarlem and then X. Contrarily to these groups, strain group T showed a very different prevalence between Portugal and Brazil, with a frequency of 7% and less than 1.5%, respectively. Taking the classification by SNPs as the most accurate, we analyze the performance of Spoligotyping in strain identification. The former marker shows about 12% of miss-matches and less than 1% of unidentifiable strains. The miss-matches are observed in the most represented groups of our sample set (i.e., LAM, Haarlem and T) in almost the same proportion. Besides being more accurate in strain identification, SNPs typing can also provide phylogenetic relationships between the strain groups. Indeed, using this molecular markers we were able to observe possible signs of rare recombination events in Mtb.Overall, the use of SNP typing revealed striking similarities between MTBC populations from Portugal and Brazil. In addition this marker suggest that, albeit rare, recombination events in MTBC are likely to occur.

Analisa o Qualis Capes e os periódicos científicos na produção de artigos em Doenças Tropicais Negligenciadas (DTN), considerando pesquisadores vinculados aos Programas de Pós-Graduação (PPG) e Institutos Nacionais de Ciência e Tecnologia (INCT) aderentes às DTN e os servidores da Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz). O período selecionado foi 2015 a 2018, incluindo projeções para 2019. Para isto, selecionaram-se 2719 pesquisadores, coletando seus dados a partir da ferramenta ScriptLattes. Há tendência positiva de artigos nos estratos de maior qualidade, negativa nos de qualidade inferior, estabilização na zona neutra, e projeção de crescimento dos “sem Qualis”, tomando por base Medicina II.Os dados bibliométricos com Qualis foram organizados em ferramentas e instrumentos, tais como, Sistema de Descritores em Ciências da Saúde da Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde (DeCS/BVS), The Vantage Point, Planilha de Cálculo, VOSviewer e UCINET & NetDraw. Como principais resultados verificaram-se: leishmaniose, doença de Chagas e dengue são as doenças com maior cobertura; no aspecto concentração de artigos em uma mesma revista, leishmaniose, hanseníase, doença de Chagas, mordeduras de serpentes e dengue são as que aparecem mais bem colocadas; Plos One, Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, Plos Neglected Tropical Diseases, Revista da SBMT e Memórias do IOC são os periódicos mais representativos. Há tendência positiva de artigos nos estratos de maior qualidade, negativa nos de qualidade inferior, estabilização na zona neutra, e projeção de crescimento dos “sem Qualis”, tomando por base Medicina II. Palavras-chave: Doenças Tropicais Negligenciadas. Qualis periódicos. Revistas científicas. Produção científica.