Anal Microbial Patterns and Oncogenic Human Papillomavirus in a Pilot Study of Nigerian Men Who Have Sex with Men at Risk for or Living with HIV.

To cluster anal microbiota and define microbial patterns associated with biological, clinical, and behavioral correlates among Nigerian men who have sex with men (MSM) living with or at risk for HIV. In this cross-sectional pilot study, the 15 most abundant 16S taxa in the anal microbiota of 113 MSM underwent unsupervised K-means clustering and z-score comparisons to define similarities and dissimilarities among 4 microbiota taxonomic profiles. Distributions of oncogenic HPV (high-risk human papillomavirus [HR-HPV]), concurrent HIV, antiretroviral therapy (ART), and other clinical and behavioral data were evaluated using Fisher's exact and Kruskal-Wallis tests to determine biological signatures of cluster membership.

Predictive Score for Posttransplantation Outcomes.

Background: Most current scoring tools to predict allograft and patient survival upon kidney transplantion are based on variables collected posttransplantation. We developed a novel score to predict posttransplant outcomes using pretransplant information including routine laboratory data available before or at the time of transplantation.

Methods: Linking the 5-year patient data of a large dialysis organization to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, we identified 15 125 hemodialysis patients who underwent first deceased transplantion.

Mutations in the protamine 1 gene associated with male infertility.

In elongating spermatids, human sperm chromatin undergoes a complex compaction in which the transition proteins are extensively replaced by the protamine proteins. Several human studies demonstrate that expression of the protamine proteins is altered in some men with male infertility. For this study, we screened the PRM1 (protamine 1) gene for mutations in a large cohort of 281 men seeking infertility treatment.