BACKGROUND Plague was introduced to Madagascar in 1898 and continues to be a significant human health problem. It exists mainly in the central highlands, but in the 1990s was reintroduced to the port city of Mahajanga, where it caused extensive human outbreaks. Despite its prevalence, the phylogeography and molecular epidemiology of Y. pestis in Madagascar has been difficult to study due to the...

Article history: Received: 20 July 2013 Accepted: 24 Aug 2013 Available online: 15 Oct 2013 ZJRMS 2014; 16(12): 51-54 Background: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with unknown etiology. Interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) is naturally occurring cytokine that inhibits interleukin-1 (IL-1) activity by binding to the IL-1 receptors without signal transduction. The...

To study the dynamics of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in France, 4,654 M. bovis strains isolated mainly from livestock and wildlife since 1978 were characterized by spoligotyping and MLVA based on MIRU-VNTR. In our study spoligotyping allowed the discrimination of 176 types although 3 spoligotypes are predominant and account for more than half of the total strain population: SB0120 (26%), SB0134 (...

BACKGROUND Tuberculosis (TB) patients with multiple episodes of anti-TB treatment represent an important source of TB transmission, as well as a serious threat to the control of drug resistant TB, due to the high risk of multidrug and extensively drug resistance (MDR/XDR) and elongating infectiousness of this patient group. In this study we analyzed the possible risk of development and transmis...

Monoamine Oxidase A (MAOA) is a critical enzyme in the catabolism of monoaminergic neurotransmitters. MAOA transcriptional activity is thought to be regulated by a well characterized 30 base pair (bp) variable nucleotide repeat (VNTR) that lies approximately ∼1000 bp upstream of the transcriptional start site (TSS). However, clinical associations between this VNTR genotype and behavioral states...

We investigated the possible association between genetic polymorphisms in the dopamine receptor and serotonin transporter genes and the responses of schizophrenic patients treated with either risperidone or perospirone. The subjects comprised 27 patients with schizophrenia who were clinically evaluated both before and after treatment. The genotyping of the polymorphisms of the dopamine D2 recep...

Ethnic admixtures may interfere with the definition of type 1 diabetes (T1D) risk determinants. The role of HLA, PTPN22, INS-VNTR, and CTLA4 in T1D predisposition was analyzed in Brazilian T1D patients (n = 915), with 81.7% self-reporting as white and 789 controls (65.6% white). The results were corrected for population stratification by genotyping 93 ancestry informative markers (AIMs) (BeadXp...

Staphylococcus aureus is a major human pathogen, a relevant pathogen in veterinary medicine, and a major cause of food poisoning. Epidemiological investigation tools are needed to establish surveillance of S. aureus strains in humans, animals and food. In this study, we investigated 145 S. aureus isolates recovered from various animal species, disease conditions, food products and food poisonin...

Molecular surveillance of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) using 24-loci MIRU-VNTR in the European Union suggests the occurrence of international transmission. In early 2014, Austria detected a molecular MDR-TB cluster of five isolates. Links to Romania and Germany prompted the three countries to investigate possible cross-border MDR-TB transmission jointly. We searched genotyping data...

BACKGROUND Phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH) gene is the well-known causative gene for classic Phenylketonuria (PKU) (OMIM#261600) disease, with more than 500 reported mutations. Through this study, a novel mutation in the PAH gene in an Iranian pedigree with phenylketonuria was introduced. METHODS A consanguineous family with a 10-year old affected girl was referred for genetic analysis. Mutat...