Southern Appalachian forests are recognized as a biodiversity hot spot of global significance, particularly for endemic aquatic salamanders and mussels. The dominant driver of land-cover and land-use change in this region is surface mining, with an ever-increasing proportion occurring as mountaintop mining with valley fill operations (MTVF). In MTVF, seams of coal are exposed using explosives, ...

Herbal remedies containing aristolochic acid (AA) have been designated to be a strong carcinogen. This review summarizes major epidemiologic evidence to argue for the causal association between AA exposure and urothelial carcinoma as well as nephropathy. The exposure scenarios include the following: Belgian women taking slimming pills containing single material Guang Fang Ji, consumptions of mi...

Histoplasmosis is an endemic mycosis in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys and can cause disseminated infection in immunocompromised hosts. Disseminated histoplasmosis is often respiratory in nature and most cases in transplant patients occur within 2 years post-transplantation. A 32-year-old male on mycophenolate and tacrolimus who underwent an orthotopic liver transplantation 10 years pri...

We used the State Inpatient Databases from the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to provide state-specific age-adjusted blastomycosis-associated hospitalization incidence throughout the entire United States. Among the 46 states studied, states within the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys had the highest age-adjusted hospitalization incidence. Specifically, Wisconsin had ...

divided into three major areas: the coast, the central valleys, and the river basins. Rainfall is less than in the Gulf Coast region, averaging from 20 to 60 inches annually. The important indigenous grasses are Hilaria semplei, H. cenchroides, Bouteloua filiformis, B. curtipendula, Cathestecum erectum, C. multifidum, Opixia stolonifera, Heteropogon contortus, Panicum spp., Paspalum spp., E I y...

Ecuador is a small country located on the northwest comer of the South American continent. Intertwined within its boundaries abounds a wondrous array of diversity. Thee diverse regions encompass the geography of the land: the Costa, the Sierra, and the Oriente. The Costa region borders the Pacific Ocean and consists of lowlands, mountains, and rolling hills dividing the river valleys. The Sierr...

In the United States, histoplasmosis is generally thought to occur mainly in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, and the classic map of histoplasmosis distribution reflecting this is second nature to many U.S. physicians. With the advent of the HIV pandemic reports of patients with progressive disseminated histoplasmosis and AIDS came from regions of known endemicity, as well as from region...

Histoplasma capsulatum, a dimorphic fungus found world-wide, is endemic to regions of the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys and portions of Central and South America. Initial infection can present with acute pulmonary symptoms or remain clinically asymptomatic, with disease course generally guided by degree of inoculum and underlying immunosuppression. A chronic, progressive course of weight l...