Summary
In this study we sought to evaluate whether psychological factors in males affect semen quality and pregnancy. In 1076 men of infertile couples, psychological factors, i.e. exposure to acute ...stress, coping with stress, the WHO (five) Well‐Being Index and the Zung’s Anxiety Scale Inventory scores were assessed by a questionnaire at the time of semen analysis. Relationships between psychological factors and semen quality (sperm concentration, rapid and progressive motility and normal morphology) were assessed. In 353 men with infertility duration of ≤1.5 years, sperm concentration ≥5 × 106 sperm/mL and a female partner with a laparoscopically confirmed tubal patency, we looked prospectively for relations between psychological factors and the occurrence of a natural pregnancy at a 6‐month follow‐up (n = 124), and first‐trimester loss (n = 18). Anxiety trait, found in 19% of men, was related to previous in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection attempts (p = 0.014), cigarette intake (p = 0.006), alcohol intake (p = 0.026) and sexual difficulties (p < 0.001). Regression analyses indicated a significant positive relationship between the level of sperm concentration and the WHO (five) Well‐Being Index score, each successive score number accounting for a 7.3% increase in sperm concentration (p = 0.039), whereas no correlation was found between psychological factors and sperm rapid progressive motility and normal morphology. Poorer coping with stress was related to the occurrence of a first‐trimester miscarriage (p = 0.016) in the female partner. Possible depression in males is related to decreased sperm concentration, and poor coping with stress is associated with increased occurrence of early miscarriage.
Antimicrobial resistance and One Health Serna, C; Gonzalez-Zorn, B
Revista española de quimioterapia,
10/2022, Letnik:
35 Suppl 3, Številka:
Suppl3
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
Antimicrobial resistance is one of the major health problems we face in the 21st century. Nowadays we cannot understand global health without the interdependence between the human, animal and ...environmental dimensions. It is therefore logical to adopt a "One Health" approach to address this problem. In this review we show why a collaboration of all sectors and all professions is necessary in order to achieve optimal health for people, animals, plants and our environment.
In male mice heterozygous for a null apolipoprotein B (apoB), allele infertility was noticed. These data led us to investigate a possible role of APOB gene polymorphism and male infertility in ...humans. In this case–control study, we searched for an association between the insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism of the APOB gene and male infertility in 560 Slovene Caucasian men. The study group consisted of 310 infertile patients: 115 with azoospermia and 195 with oligoasthenoteratozoospermia (OAT) and a control group of 250 fertile men. We found a statistically significant difference in the genotype distribution between the two groups (χ2 = 6.315, P = 0.043). A separate analysis of azoospermic and OAT patients demonstrated that significant differences in genotype distribution were limited to the OAT group (χ2 = 7.011, P = 0.030). The presence of the D allele (DD or ID genotypes) conferred a 1.6 risk χ2 = 6.089, P = 0.014, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) = 1.102–2.347 for male infertility in the OAT group of patients. We did not find a correlation between the I/D polymorphism genotypes and the clinical characteristics of infertile men: sperm concentration (P = 0.102), rapid progressive motility (P = 0.449), normal morphology (P = 0.085) and Johnsen score (P = 0.531). These data suggest that genetic variation in the signal peptide of the APOB gene (I/D polymorphism) might be a risk factor for the development of male infertility.
Rozzle: De-cloaking Internet Malware Kolbitsch, C.; Livshits, B.; Zorn, B. ...
2012 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
Conference Proceeding
Odprti dostop
JavaScript-based malware attacks have increased in recent years and currently represent a signicant threat to the use of desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets. While static and runtime methods ...for malware detection have been proposed in the literature, both on the client side, for just-in-time in-browser detection, as well as offline, crawler-based malware discovery, these approaches encounter the same fundamental limitation. Web-based malware tends to be environment-specific, targeting a particular browser, often attacking specic versions of installed plugins. This targeting occurs because the malware exploits vulnerabilities in specific plugins and fails otherwise. As a result, a fundamental limitation for detecting a piece of malware is that malware is triggered infrequently, only showing itself when the right environment is present. We observe that, using fingerprinting techniques that capture and exploit unique properties of browser configurations, almost all existing malware can be made virtually impssible for malware scanners to detect. This paper proposes Rozzle, a JavaScript multi-execution virtual machine, as a way to explore multiple execution paths within a single execution so that environment-specific malware will reveal itself. Using large-scale experiments, we show that Rozzle increases the detection rate for offline runtime detection by almost seven times. In addition, Rozzle triples the effectiveness of online runtime detection. We show that Rozzle incurs virtually no runtime overhead and allows us to replace multiple VMs running different browser configurations with a single Rozzle-enabled browser, reducing the hardware requirements, network bandwidth, and power consumption.
BACKGROUND: Deletions of the AZFb region on the long arm of the human Y chromosome cause male infertility. However, the reciprocal products of these deletion events, AZFb duplications, have not been ...reported to date. Furthermore, it is not known whether potential AZFb duplications represent a risk factor for spermatogenic failure. METHODS: A total of 150 patients with male idiopathic subfertility (79 non-obstructive azoospermics and 71 oligozoospermics) and 150 fertile men were analysed for deletion/duplication of the sY125 locus and of the JARID1D gene using real-time PCR. RESULTS: Three azoospermic men had deletion of the sY125 locus and of the JARID1D gene. No duplication was detected. CONCLUSIONS: In our limited sample, AZFb duplications do not appear to be associated with male infertility.
16S rRNA methyltransferases are an emerging mechanism conferring high-level resistance to clinically relevant aminoglycosides and have been associated with important mechanisms such as NDM-1. We ...sought genes encoding these enzymes in isolates highly resistant (MIC >200 mg/L) to gentamicin and amikacin from an Indian hospital and we additionally screened for the novel RmtF enzyme in 132 UK isolates containing NDM.
All highly aminoglycoside-resistant isolates were screened for armA and rmtA-E by PCR, with cloning experiments performed for isolates negative for these genes. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry was used to determine the methylation target of the novel RmtF methyltransferase. RmtF-bearing strains were characterized further, including susceptibility testing, PFGE, electroporation, PCR-based replicon typing and multilocus sequence typing of rmtF-bearing plasmids.
High-level aminoglycoside resistance was detected in 140/1000 (14%) consecutive isolates of Enterobacteriaceae from India. ArmA, RmtB and RmtC were identified among 46%, 20% and 27% of these isolates, respectively. The novel rmtF gene was detected in 34 aminoglycoside-resistant isolates (overall prevalence 3.4%), most (59%) of which also possessed a bla(NDM) gene; rmtF was detected in 6 NDM producers from the UK. It was found on different plasmid backbones. Four and two isolates showed resistance to tigecycline and colistin, respectively.
RmtF was often found in association with NDM in members of the Enterobacteriaceae and on diverse plasmids. It is of clinical concern that the RmtF- and NDM-positive strains identified here show additional resistance to tigecycline and colistin, current drugs of last resort for the treatment of serious bacterial infections.
Elastase–inhibitor complex was assessed by immunoassay in the seminal plasma of 312 men attending the outpatient infertility clinic. Using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, ...elastase at the cut-off value of ≥290 ng/ml was shown to be efficient (sensitivity 79.5%, specificity 74.4%) in the detection of genital tract inflammation as defined by leukocytospermia (>1×106 leukocytes/ml). The prevalence of increased elastase in 292 infertile men was significantly higher (34%) as compared with that (5%) observed in 20 fertile men (P = 0.02). Moreover, high elastase concentration (≥290 ng/ml) was observed in 66 of the 264 men (25%) without leukocytospermia. A significant positive correlation was found between elastase concentration and patient age (r = 0.202, P < 0.0001) and the number of leukocytes (r = 0.330, P < 0.0001). A negative correlation was found between elastase concentration and semen volume (r = –0.146, P = 0.01) and the percentage of spermatozoa with single-stranded DNA (r = –0.194, P = 0.024), but there was no correlation between elastase and sperm reactive oxygen species production. A higher seminal elastase concentration was significantly associated with tubal damage in female partners (P < 0.001). After norfloxacine antibiotic therapy, decrease in elastase concentration was observed in 15 (25%) of the 60 treated patients. Tubal damage in the partner negatively affected the response to antibiotic therapy. In conclusion, granulocyte elastase is a reliable screening test for silent genital tract inflammation of the couple. The elastase–inhibitor complex may have a protective effect in reducing sperm DNA denaturation.
The ruminant pathogen Listeria ivanovii differs from Listeria monocytogenes in that it causes strong, bizonal haemolysis and a characteristic shovel‐shaped co‐operative haemolytic (‘CAMP‐like’) ...reaction with Rhodococcus equi. We cloned the gene responsible for the differential haemolytic properties of L. ivanovii, smcL. It encodes a sphingomyelinase C (SMase) highly similar (> 50% identity) to the SMases from Staphylococcus aureus (β‐toxin), Bacillus cereus and Leptospira interrogans. smcL was transcribed monocistronically and was expressed independently of PrfA. Low‐stringency Southern blots demonstrated that, within the genus Listeria, smcL was present only in L. ivanovii. We constructed an smcL knock‐out mutant. Its phenotype on blood agar was identical to that of L. monocytogenes (i.e. weak haemolysis and no shovel‐shaped CAMP‐like reaction with R. equi ). This mutant was less virulent for mice, and its intracellular proliferation was impaired in the bovine epithelial‐like cell line MDBK. The role of SmcL in intracellular survival was investigated using an L. monocytogenes mutant lacking the membrane‐damaging determinants hly, plcA and plcB, being thus unable to grow intracellularly. Complementation of this mutant with smcL on a plasmid was sufficient to promote bacterial intracellular proliferation in MDBK cells. Transmission electron microscopy showed that SmcL mediates the disruption of the phagocytic vacuole and the release of bacteria into the cytosol. Therefore, L. ivanovii possesses a third phospholipase with membrane‐damaging activity that, together with PlcA and PlcB, may act in concert with the pore‐forming toxin Hly to mediate efficient escape from the vacuolar compartment. The 5′ end of smcL is contiguous with the internalin locus i‐inlFE, which is also specific to L. ivanovii and is required for full virulence in mice. Thus, smcL forms part of a novel virulence gene cluster in Listeria that is species specific.
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