Estimation of taurindicine hybridization of American Zebu cattle in Brazil.

Our objective was to estimate Bos primigenius taurus introgression in American Zebu cattle. One hundred and four American Zebu (Nellore) cattle were submitted to mtDNA, microsatellite and satellite analysis. Twenty-three alleles were detected in microsatellite analysis, averaging 4.

Characterization and validation of a Portuguese natural reference soil to be used as substrate for ecotoxicological purposes.

This study describes the first attempt to validate a Portuguese natural soil (PTRS1) to be used as reference soil for ecotoxicological purposes, aimed to both: (i) obtain ecotoxicological data for the derivation of Soil Screening Values (SSVs) with regional relevance, acting as a substrate to be spiked with ranges of concentrations of the chemicals under evaluation and (ii) act as control and as substrate for the dilution of contaminated soils in ecotoxicological assays performed to evaluate the ecotoxicity of contaminated soils, in tier 2 of risk assessment frameworks, applied to contaminated lands. The PTRS1 is a cambisol from a granitic area integrated in the Central Iberian Zone. After chemical characterization of the soil in terms of pseudo-total metals, PAHs, PCBs and pesticide contents, it was possible to perceive that some metals (Ba, Be, Co, Cr and V) surpass the Dutch Target Values (Dtvs) corrected for the percentage of organic matter and clay of the PTRS1.

Adaptation of a low-cost medium-throughput genotyping system for ovine prion protein gene polymorphims associated with scrapie.

Resistance and susceptibility to scrapie in sheep have been associated with SNPs located at codons 136, 154 and 171 of the prion protein (PRNP) gene. Many countries have sheep breeding programs selecting for resistance to scrapie based on the genotyping of these SNPs. We adapted a fast and robust method for genotyping sheep flocks for these polymorphisms, with reduced costs.

Erythropoietin attenuates apoptosis after ischemia-reperfusion-induced renal injury in transiently hyperglycemic Wister rats.

Background: Hyperglycemia is associated with a decreased tolerance to ischemia and an increased severity of renal ischemia reperfusion (I/R) injury. It has been suggested that erythropoietin (EPO) attenuates this effect in normoglycemic animals. This study sought to examine the effects of EPO on treatment renal I/R injury (IRI) in transiently hyperglycemic rats.

Food tolerance in patients submitted to gastric bypass: the importance of using an integrated and interdisciplinary approach.

Background: Under the restrictive component, patients undergoing gastric bypass may have food intolerance with or without complications.

Methods: This study used quantitative, analytical, observational methodology with patients submitted to Roux-en-Y gastric bypass without the placement of a ring at Hospital Universitário do Rio Grande do Norte in the city of Natal, Brazil between July 2005 and August 2010. Out of 176 patients monitored after surgery by the interdisciplinary team, 47 took part in the study.

Mid-esophagus unresectable cancer treated with a low cost stent. First experience.

Background: In the cancer of the esophagus, with recent technologic advances, self-expanding metal stents (SEMS) are at the forefront of the armamentarium for re-establishing luminal patency. Weighed against the numerous advantages of stents are the import conditions and the cost. In light of this, we tested new low cost prostheses having the basic needs and characteristics to aim a significant benefit to poor people having advanced esophageal cancer, in a Brazilian regional public hospital.

PRNP haplotype and genotype frequencies in Brazilian sheep: issues for conservation and breeding programs.

Polymorphisms of PRNP gene have been strongly correlated to the susceptibility/resistance to scrapie in sheep. Variants at the coding positions 136, 154 and 171 have been the most frequently associated to susceptibility to classical scrapie. The aim of this study was to estimate PRNP haplotype and genotype frequencies in a sample of 1400 sheep from 13 different breeds that are representative of the main production regions in Brazil.

[Incorporating variability in the process of identification of the global maximum model in Grade of Membership (GoM): methodological considerations.].

The availability of increasingly complex and multidimensional datasets is one of the main causes for the increase in studies employing multivariate analyses based on fuzzy sets. Even though the Grade of Membership method has been widely used in Brazil for empirical studies in health and social sciences, issues regarding identifiability and stability of the final parameters estimated by GoM 3.4 software have not been thoroughly examined.

Differential gene expression and developmental competence in in vitro produced bovine embryos.

The embryonic developmental block occurs at the 8-cell stage in cattle and is characterized by a lengthening of the cell cycle and an increased number of embryos that stop development. The maternal-embryonic transition arises at the same stage resulting in the transcription of many genes. Gene expression studies during this stage may contribute to the understanding of the physiological mechanisms involved in the maternal-embryonic transition.

Haplotypes of the bovine IgG2 heavy gamma chain in tick-resistant and tick-susceptible breeds of cattle.

Bovines present contrasting, heritable phenotypes of infestations with the cattle tick, Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus. Tick salivary glands produce IgG-binding proteins (IGBPs) as a mechanism for escaping from host antibodies that these ectoparasites ingest during blood meals. Allotypes that occur in the constant region of IgG may differ in their capacity to bind with tick IGBPs; this may be reflected by the distribution of distinct allotypes according to phenotypes of tick infestations.

Heart stroke volume, cardiac output, and ejection fraction in 265 normal fetus in the second half of gestation assessed by 4D ultrasound using spatio-temporal image correlation.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to establish nomograms for fetal stroke volume (SV), cardiac output (CO), and ejection fraction (EF) using four-dimensional ultrasound with spatio-temporal image correlation (STIC) modality.

Methods: The fetal heart was scanned using STIC modality, starting with classic four-chamber view plane, during fetal quiescence with abdomen uppermost, at an angle of 20-30°, without color Doppler flow mapping. In post-processing virtual organ, computer-aided analysis technique was used to obtain a sequence of six sections of each ventricular volume in end-systolic volume (ESV) and end-diastolic volume (EDV).

Influence of anabolic steroid treatment associated to physical exercise in the ultrasonic vocalization of rats.

Unlike humans, who communicate in frequency bands between 250 Hz and 6 kHz, rats can communicate in frequencies above 18 kHz. Their vocalization types depend on the context and are normally associated to subjective or emotional states. It was reported significant vocal changes due to administration of replacement testosterone in a trained tenor singer with hypogonadism.

Change in central kinin B2 receptor density after exercise training in rats.

Cardiovascular responses elicited by the stimulation of kinin B2 receptors in the IV cerebral ventricle, paratrigeminal nucleus or in the thoracic spinal cord are similar to those observed during an exercise bout. Considering that the kalikrein-kinin system (KKS) could act on the cardiovascular modulation during behavioral responses as physical exercise or stress, this study evaluated the central B2 receptor densities of Wistar (W) and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) after chronic moderate exercise. Animals were exercise-trained for ten weeks on a treadmill.

New labelling technology for molecular probes applied to the ligation detection reaction-universal array system.

The ligation detection reaction (LDR) associated with universal arrays (UA) uses a fluorescently labelled probe (DP) and a Zip Code-extended probe to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms in DNA target sequences. When used for genotyping, the LDR-UA technique uses two DPs, each specific to an allele and labelled with a different fluorophore. The fluorescent signals are processed to calculate the genotype.

Role of kinin B1 and B2 receptors in memory consolidation during the aging process of mice.

Under physiological conditions, elderly people present memory deficit associated with neuronal loss. This pattern is also associated with Alzheimer's disease but, in this case, in a dramatically intensified level. Kinin receptors have been involved in neurodegeneration and increase of amyloid-beta concentration, associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD).

[Not Available].

O método Grade of Membership (GoM) tem sido cada vez mais utilizado por demógrafos brasileiros e tem a vantagem de possuir um parâmetro que mensura a heterogeneidade individual, com base nas correlações não-observáveis entre as categorias de resposta das variáveis de interesse, gerando um medida do grau de pertencimento de cada indivíduo a perfis extremos. Alguns autores, contudo, chamam atenção para questões importantes na calibragem dos modelos finais que utilizam o programa GoM versão 3.4, como o problema de identificabilidade - soluções múltiplas para parâmetros estimados.

Participation of kinin receptors on memory impairment after chronic infusion of human amyloid-beta 1-40 peptide in mice.

Chronic infusion of human amyloid-beta 1-40 (Abeta) in the lateral ventricle (LV) of rats is associated with memory impairment and increase of kinin receptors in cortical and hippocampal areas. Deletion of kinin B1 or B2 receptors abolished memory impairment caused by an acute single injection of Abeta in the LV. As brain tissue and kinin receptors could unlikely react to acute or chronic administration of a similar quantity of Abeta, we evaluated the participation of B1 or B2 receptors in memory impairment after chronic infusion of Abeta.

Resolving the evolution of extant and extinct ruminants with high-throughput phylogenomics.

The Pecorans (higher ruminants) are believed to have rapidly speciated in the Mid-Eocene, resulting in five distinct extant families: Antilocapridae, Giraffidae, Moschidae, Cervidae, and Bovidae. Due to the rapid radiation, the Pecoran phylogeny has proven difficult to resolve, and 11 of the 15 possible rooted phylogenies describing ancestral relationships among the Antilocapridae, Giraffidae, Cervidae, and Bovidae have each been argued as representations of the true phylogeny. Here we demonstrate that a genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping platform designed for one species can be used to genotype ancient DNA from an extinct species and DNA from species diverged up to 29 million years ago and that the produced genotypes can be used to resolve the phylogeny for this rapidly radiated infraorder.

Embryo mitochondrial DNA depletion is reversed during early embryogenesis in cattle.

The extensive replication of mitochondria during oogenesis and the wide variability in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) copy numbers present in fully grown oocytes indicate that mtDNA amount may play an important role during early embryogenesis. Using bovine oocytes derived from follicles of different sizes to study the influence of mtDNA content on development, we showed that oocytes obtained from small follicles, known to be less competent in developing into blastocysts, contain less mtDNA than those originating from larger follicles. However, because of the high variability in copy number, a more accurate approach was examined in which parthenogenetic one-cell embryos were biopsied to measure their mtDNA content and then cultured to assess development capacity.

[Urinary incontinence among physical education students].

Urinary incontinence (UI) is seen as a problem that affects older multiparous women. Little attention has been given to identifying UI in groups of younger or nulliparous women. This study verified the prevalence of UI and the characteristics of urinary loss among young nulliparous female physical education students.

Genome-wide survey of SNP variation uncovers the genetic structure of cattle breeds.

The imprints of domestication and breed development on the genomes of livestock likely differ from those of companion animals. A deep draft sequence assembly of shotgun reads from a single Hereford female and comparative sequences sampled from six additional breeds were used to develop probes to interrogate 37,470 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 497 cattle from 19 geographically and biologically diverse breeds. These data show that cattle have undergone a rapid recent decrease in effective population size from a very large ancestral population, possibly due to bottlenecks associated with domestication, selection, and breed formation.

A first generation whole genome RH map of the river buffalo with comparison to domestic cattle.

Background: The recently constructed river buffalo whole-genome radiation hybrid panel (BBURH5000) has already been used to generate preliminary radiation hybrid (RH) maps for several chromosomes, and buffalo-bovine comparative chromosome maps have been constructed. Here, we present the first-generation whole genome RH map (WG-RH) of the river buffalo generated from cattle-derived markers. The RH maps aligned to bovine genome sequence assembly Btau_4.

An anatomical study on the lingual-facial trunk.

Purpose: We quantified variations of the lingual artery origin, measured the lingual artery origin distance from clinical relevant landmarks and compared the lingual artery diameters with normal and variable origin.

Methods: Forty-two formalin fixed male cadavers were bilaterally evaluated. Measurements were performed with the aid of an electronic digital caliper.

[Helicobacter pylori and peptic disease: comparative study of the diagnostic methods].

Prospective endoscopic study of 150 patients revealed chronic gastritis in 109 (72.6%), gastric ulcer in 6 (4%), chronic duodenitis in 9 (6%) and duodenal ulcer in 26 (17.4%).