This study aimed to investigate the cytotoxicity and bioactivity of a novel nanocomposite containing nanoparticles of bioactive glass (nBGs) on human dental pulp stem cells (hDPSCs). nBGs were ...synthesized by the sol–gel method. Biodentine (BD) nanocomposites (nBG/BD) were prepared with 2 and 5% wt of nBG content; unmodified BD and glass ionomer cement were used as references. Cell viability and attachment were evaluated after 3, 7 and 14 days. Odontogenic differentiation was assessed with alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity after 7 and 14 days of exposure. Cells successfully adhered and proliferated on nBG/BD nanocomposites, cell viability of nanocomposites was comparable with unmodified BD and higher than GIC. nBG/BD nanocomposites were, particularly, more active to promote odontogenic differentiation, expressed as higher ALP activity of hDPSCs after 7 days of exposure, than neat BD or GIC. This novel nanocomposite biomaterial, nBG/BD, allowed hDPSC attachment and proliferation and increased the expression of ALP, upregulated in mineral-producing cells. These findings open opportunities to use nBG/BD in vital pulp therapies.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Background
Ending December 2019, the world had to face to COVID‐19. Latin America and the Caribbean suffered the effects where the contiguous and the number of deaths has been significant. Studies ...indicate that older adults with some degree of cognitive impairment are at greater risk of worsening their cognitive status and mental health, for this reason it’s exposed that social isolation and loneliness has harmful effects on the health of this population. This mini‐review inquires on the effects of COVID‐19 due to social isolation on neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) in Latin American older adults with and without dementia.
Method
A search was carried out in PubMed, SCOPUS, and ScienceDirect identifying all articles published up to July 31, 2021 using the keywords “social isolation”, “lockdown”, “quarantine”, “COVID‐19”,, “neuropsychiatric symptoms ”, “neurobehavioral”, “dementia”,“ mild cognitive impairment ”,“ Older People ”, “aging”, “elderly”. Two independent reviewers screened and selected appropriate articles and a third researcher helped resolve disagreements. The selected articles met the following criteria: written in English, Spanish or Portuguese, original article; focused on elderly subjects, articles that provided information on the NPS effects in Latin American populations during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The review was based on the PRISMA Statement and used the SIGN criteria.
Result
From 61 articles recovered from electronic databases (PubMed, Science Direct and Scopus) 10 of them were chosen for this review. The majority of the articles reported in a general way a negative impact on the mental health of the population in Latin America. They referred to a significant increase in the anxiety and depression symptoms. The majority of the articles were studies developed in Brazil, Argentina and Chile.
Conclusion
The COVID‐19 has shown a negative impact on the mental health of older adults. Latin America is a region with important socio‐sanitary problems which increase the impact of the pandemic in SNP, especially in older adults. It's necessary to increase the studies in Latin America that glimpse the real situation in the region.
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FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
School violence and bullying are prevalent problems that affect health in general, especially through the development of emotional and behavioral problems, and can result in the deterioration of the ...academic performance of the student victim. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence rates of aggressive behaviors according to types of school violence and bullying, sociodemographic characteristics, and variation by department, region, and time in the period between 2014 and 2018 in Peru.
The design was observational and cross-sectional based on data from the Specialized System for Reporting Cases of School Violence (Sistema Especializado en Reporte de Casos sobre Violencia Escolar-SíseVe) in Peru, which covers a population of 23,641 students at the initial, primary, and secondary levels of Basic Regular Education Educación Básica Regular (EBR), for the 2014-2018 period. The prevalence rates of the different types of school violence and bullying, the sociodemographic characteristics, and the variation by department, region, and time in the period between 2014 and 2018 were estimated.
Psychological violence/bullying occurred at higher prevalence rates (185.8 and 62.6 per 100,000 residents). Women from public institutions reported greater sexual violence, mostly by teachers (67.8%) than by other students (32.2%). The Selva region had the highest prevalence rate of sexual violence (10.1 per 100,000 residents). The departments of Tacna and Piura had the highest and lowest rates of psychological/verbal violence and bullying in 2018 (95.79 and 25.31 per 100,000 residents).
Psychological/verbal violence and bullying is highly prevalent among students; women report being victims of sexual violence by administrative personnel of public institutions. The Selva region had the highest rate of sexual violence, and Piura and Tacna had the highest and lowest rates of violence and psychological/verbal bullying. Based on these results, it is suggested to conduct evidence-based prevention programs in Peruvian schools to reduce these social problems.
Mental health problems among undergraduates are a significant public health concern. Most studies exploring mental health in this population during the pandemic have been conducted in high-income ...countries. Fewer studies come from Latin American countries. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, and suicide risk, and explore the association with several relevant variables in personal, family, university, and SARS-CoV-2 pandemic domains.
A cross-sectional study was conducted in Chile in a medium-size private University. Outcome variables were explored with valid instruments: Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21), Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), and the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS). Independent variables from personal (e.g., sex, age, sexual orientation, history of mental health problems, substance use), family (e.g., parental educational background, family history of mental health problems, family functioning), university (e.g., course year, financial support, psychological sense of university belonging, history of failing subjects) and SARS-CoV-2 domains (e.g., history of personal and family contagion, fear of contracting SARS-CoV-2, frequency of physical activity, keeping routines and social contact). Multivariable logistic regression models were conducted for each outcome, after univariable and domain-specific multivariable models. The significant variable at each step was selected if the
-value was ≤ 0.05.
A total of 5,037 students answered the survey-the global response rate of 63.5%. Most of the students were females (70.4%) and freshmen students (25.2%). The prevalence of mental health problems was high: depression (37.1%), anxiety (37.9%), and stress (54.6%). Insomnia was reported in 32.5% of students, and suicide risk in 20.4% of students. The associated variables at personal domain were history of mental health problems, substance use, and sexual orientation; at family domain, family functioning and family history of mental health problems; at university domain, violence victimization and sense of belonging; and in SARS-CoV-2 domain, having a daily routine and fear to contracting SARS-CoV-2 by students themselves or others.
The prevalence of mental health problems is high among undergraduate students and some of the associated factors, such as victimization and a sense of belonging can be used in preventive interventions.
Este artículo tiene por objetivo presentar la experiencia de una institución de educación superior, a través de los resultados de la implementación de un modelo de dirección estratégica, investigando ...el impacto que presentan las etapas de análisis, formulación e implementación de este modelo para el periodo 2006-2017, 11 años. Para ello, en primer lugar, se desarrolla el marco teórico y, en segundo lugar, se expone la metodología de estudio de caso con el modelo de dirección implementado, al igual que la hipótesis y variables de investigación sobre las cuales se aplica posteriormente un análisis descriptivo, exploratorio, no experimental y se construye un modelo de ecuaciones estructurales (PLS-SEM). Los resultados de la investigación arrojan valores de R2 de 79,2% y 94,9%, verificando que la etapa de análisis estratégico impacta positivamente en la etapa de formulación e implementación que posee el modelo de dirección utilizado. Finalmente, se concluye que es relevante emplear un modelo que permita guiar a las instituciones de educación superior.
The Atacama Desert is the most arid desert on Earth, focus of important research activities related to microbial biodiversity studies. In this context, metabolic characterization of arid soil ...bacteria is crucial to understand their survival strategies under extreme environmental stress. We investigated whether strain-specific features of two Microbacterium species were involved in the metabolic ability to tolerate/adapt to local variations within an extreme desert environment. Using an integrative systems biology approach we have carried out construction and comparison of genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) of two Microbacterium sp., CGR1 and CGR2, previously isolated from physicochemically contrasting soil sites in the Atacama Desert. Despite CGR1 and CGR2 belong to different phylogenetic clades, metabolic pathways and attributes are highly conserved in both strains. However, comparison of the GEMs showed significant differences in the connectivity of specific metabolites related to pH tolerance and CO
production. The latter is most likely required to handle acidic stress through decarboxylation reactions. We observed greater GEM connectivity within Microbacterium sp. CGR1 compared to CGR2, which is correlated with the capacity of CGR1 to tolerate a wider pH tolerance range. Both metabolic models predict the synthesis of pigment metabolites (β-carotene), observation validated by HPLC experiments. Our study provides a valuable resource to further investigate global metabolic adaptations of bacterial species to grow in soils with different abiotic factors within an extreme environment.
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Schools are increasingly experiencing physical, psychological, and sexual violence, which impacts students' academic achievement and physical and emotional health. Our objective was to identify ...regional prevalence rates, average prevalence by aggressor type, and provincial spatial conglomerates with higher rates for each type of school violence reported in educational settings in Peru during 2019.
An analysis was made of 12,132 cases reported through Peru's Specialized School Violence System (SíseVe). The Moran indices were calculated using provincial prevalence rates to identify conglomerates with high prevalence.
In the coast region, the Department of Tacna reported the highest prevalence rates for physical (99.7) and psychological (107); the Department of Amazonas, which is in the jungle, reported the highest prevalence rate for sexual violence (74.6), with teachers in public schools accounting for the majority of sexual assaults against students (56%).
Sexual violence predominated in the jungle zone, with a significant percentage of teachers participating in violence with sexual connotations. Physical and psychological violence prevailed in the coastal region.
Despite representing the largest fraction of animal life, the number of insect species whose genome has been sequenced is barely in the hundreds. The order Dermaptera (the earwigs) suffers from a ...lack of genomic information despite its unique position as one of the basally derived insect groups and its importance in agroecosystems. As part of a national educational and outreach program in genomics, a plan was formulated to engage the participation of high school students in a genome sequencing project. Students from twelve schools across Chile were instructed to capture earwig specimens in their geographical area, to identify them and to provide material for genome sequencing to be carried out by themselves in their schools.
The school students collected specimens from two cosmopolitan earwig species: Euborellia annulipes (Fam. Anisolabididae) and Forficula auricularia (Fam. Forficulidae). Genomic DNA was extracted and, with the help of scientific teams that traveled to the schools, was sequenced using nanopore sequencers. The sequence data obtained for both species was assembled and annotated. We obtained genome sizes of 1.18 Gb (F. auricularia) and 0.94 Gb (E. annulipes) with the number of predicted protein coding genes being 31,800 and 40,000, respectively. Our analysis showed that we were able to capture a high percentage (≥ 93%) of conserved proteins indicating genomes that are useful for comparative and functional analysis. We were also able to characterize structural elements such as repetitive sequences and non-coding RNA genes. Finally, functional categories of genes that are overrepresented in each species suggest important differences in the process underlying the formation of germ cells, and modes of reproduction between them, features that are one of the distinguishing biological properties that characterize these two distant families of Dermaptera.
This work represents an unprecedented instance where the scientific and lay community have come together to collaborate in a genome sequencing project. The versatility and accessibility of nanopore sequencers was key to the success of the initiative. We were able to obtain full genome sequences of two important and widely distributed species of insects which had not been analyzed at this level previously. The data made available by the project should illuminate future studies on the Dermaptera.
The rise of multiresistant bacterial pathogens is currently one of the most critical threats to global health, encouraging a better understanding of the evolution and spread of antimicrobial ...resistance. In this regard, the role of the environment as a source of resistance mechanisms remains poorly understood. Moreover, we still know a minimal part of the microbial diversity and resistome present in remote and extreme environments, hosting microbes that evolved to resist harsh conditions and thus a potentially rich source of novel resistance genes. This work demonstrated that the Antarctic Peninsula soils host a remarkable microbial diversity and a widespread presence of autochthonous antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resistance genes. We observed resistance to a wide array of antibiotics among isolates, including Pseudomonas resisting ten or more different compounds, with an overall increased resistance in bacteria from non-intervened areas. In addition, genome analysis of selected isolates showed several genes encoding efflux pumps, as well as a lack of known resistance genes for some of the resisted antibiotics, including colistin, suggesting novel uncharacterized mechanisms. By combining metagenomic approaches based on analyzing raw reads, assembled contigs, and metagenome-assembled genomes, we found hundreds of widely distributed genes potentially conferring resistance to different antibiotics (including an outstanding variety of inactivation enzymes), metals, and biocides, hosted mainly by Polaromonas, Pseudomonas, Streptomyces, Variovorax, and Burkholderia. Furthermore, a proportion of these genes were found inside predicted plasmids and other mobile elements, including a putative OXA-like carbapenemase from Polaromonas harboring conserved key residues and predicted structural features. All this evidence indicates that the Antarctic Peninsula soil microbiota has a broad natural resistome, part of which could be transferred horizontally to pathogenic bacteria, acting as a potential source of novel resistance genes.
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•Antarctic Peninsula soils host a highly diverse microbiota and natural resistome.•The culturable diversity includes autochthonous multidrug resistant Pseudomonas.•Many resistance genes are efflux pumps and antibiotic inactivation enzymes.•The resistome includes genes linked to resistance to metals and biocides.•Part of the resistome is encoded in mobile genetic elements.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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