Publications by authors named "Emerson A Castilho-Martins"

Introduction: Frontline healthcare workers providing care for COVID-19 are more likely to get infected and die compared with other professionals. Deaths or sick leaves due to COVID-19 can affect the smooth operation of health services in areas with shortage of workers.

Objectives: To analyze factors associated with the death of healthcare workers due to COVID-19 in the state of Amapá, Brazil.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: The state of Amapá is located in Brazil's Legal Amazon and comprises 16 municipalities. Its history is marked by social vulnerability and industrial mining; therefore, its current socioeconomic and occupational context should be analyzed considering possible sociohistorical and geographic influences.

Objectives: To analyze and/or describe the epidemiological profile of workers, occupational accidents, the socioeconomic context, and time evolution of the number of workers in the state and their relationship with the state's gross domestic product.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Zika virus (ZIKV) has caused an explosive epidemic linked to severe clinical outcomes in the Americas. As of June 2018, 4,929 ZIKV suspected infections and 46 congenital syndrome cases had been reported in Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil. Although Manaus is a key demographic hub in the Amazon region, little is known about the ZIKV epidemic there, in terms of both transmission and viral genetic diversity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

l-Arginine is an essential amino acid in Leishmania (Leishmania) amazonensis metabolism. A key enzyme for parasite l-arginine metabolism is arginase (ARG) that uses arginine to produce urea and ornithine, a precursor of polyamine pathway guaranteeing parasite replication in both insect and mammal hosts. There is an alternative pathway to produce ornithine via l-proline and glutamate, but this mechanism is not described in Leishmania.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There is a rising resistance against antimony drugs, the gold-standard for treatment until some years ago. That is a serious problem due to the paucity of drugs in current clinical use. In a research to reveal how these drugs affect the parasite during treatment and to unravel the underlying basis for their resistance, we have employed metabolomics to study treatment in Leishmania infantum promastigotes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Synaptic transmission is an essential process for neuron physiology. Such process is enabled in part due to modulation of neurotransmitter release. Adenosine is a synaptic modulator of neurotransmitter release in the Central Nervous System, including neurons of medulla oblongata, where several nuclei are involved with neurovegetative reflexes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Miltefosine (MT) (hexadecylphosphocholine) was implemented to cope with resistance against antimonials, the classical treatment in Leishmaniasis. Given the scarcity of anti- Leishmania (L) drugs and the increasing appearance of resistance, there is an obvious need for understanding the mechanism of action and development of such resistance. Metabolomics is an increasingly popular tool in the life sciences due to it being a relatively fast and accurate technique that can be applied either with a particular focus or in a global manner to reveal new knowledge about biological systems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Metabolomics has become an invaluable tool to unveil biology of pathogens, with immediate application to chemotherapy. It is currently accepted that there is not one single technique capable of obtaining the whole metabolic fingerprint of a biological system either due to their different physical-chemical properties or concentrations. In this work, we have explored the capability of capillary electrophoresis mass spectrometry with a sheathless interface with electrospray ionization (CE-ESI-TOF-MS) to separate metabolites in order to be used as a complementary technique to LC.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Leishmania (L.) amazonensis uses arginine to synthesize polyamines to support its growth and survival. Here we describe the presence of two gene copies, arranged in tandem, that code for the arginine transporter.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF