Publications by authors named "Jose Braga"

This study aims to analyze the correlation between healthcare professionals' knowledge of hand hygiene protocols and their actual adherence to these practices. Specifically, we investigate whether higher knowledge levels correspond to better compliance, and we examine potential influencing factors such as professional role, gender, and prior training in infection control. A non-probabilistic, convenience sample was composed of 51 healthcare professionals working in patient care.

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The oval window (OW) is an opening connecting the inner and middle ear. Its area has been shown to consistently scale with body mass (BM) in primates, and has been used alongside semi-circular canal (SCC) size to differentiate Homo sapiens and fossil hominins, including Paranthropus robustus. However, while the morphology of other inner ear elements, such as cochlea and SCCs, has been extensively studied in primates, OW shape has received little attention.

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The scope of this study was to determine the diagnostic performance of ABSI for obesity and sarcopenic obesity, compared to the results of bioimpedance analysis (BIA) and BMI, by sex and age group. It involved a cross-sectional study with 12,793 participants in the second round of ELSA-Brasil (Longitudinal Study of Adult Health in Brazil), which obtained measurements of body fat percentage using BIA and anthropometry, verifying the performance of the diagnostic tests in order to compare the indices. The results showed that for obesity in men in all three age groups, the sensitivity was below 49%.

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The bony labyrinth of the inner ear houses the sensory end-organs responsible for balance (otolithic system in the utricle and saccule, and semicircular canal system) and hearing (cochlea). Study of the bony labyrinth has revealed considerable morphological diversity in the hominin lineage (semicircular canals and cochleae) and aided in reconstructing essential aspects of primate evolution, including positional behavior, audition, and phylogenic affinities. However, evidence of evolutionary change in the hominin otolithic system remains elusive.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to identify risk factors for death from influenza A(H1N1) and assess vaccine effectiveness regarding mortality.
  • A case-control analysis was conducted involving 305 participants across five Brazilian states, with 70 being cases of influenza A(H1N1) and 235 controls.
  • Key risk factors identified included biological factors (age), pre-existing health conditions (like heart failure and diabetes), and healthcare access (such as ICU admissions), which can inform clinical practices and preparedness for future flu outbreaks.
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  • TAVR is an advanced treatment for aortic stenosis but often leads to pacemaker complications due to conduction disturbances, prompting the need for strategies like corticosteroid therapy to reduce inflammation.
  • A study analyzed 341 patients who underwent TAVR to see if corticosteroids affected pacemaker rates, finding no significant difference in implantation rates between those who received corticosteroids and those who did not.
  • Key predictors for needing a pacemaker included male gender and specific heart block types, indicating that factors beyond corticosteroid use may contribute more significantly to these complications.
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The juvenile mandible is important in the investigation of ontogenetic and evolutionary changes among early hominins. We revisit the mandibular symphysis in juvenile specimens of Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus with two main contributions. First, we employ, for the first time, methods of computational anatomy to model complex symphyseal shape differences.

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The World Health Organization (WHO) raised the global alert level for the A(H1N1) influenza pandemic in June 2009. However, since the beginning of the epidemic, the fight against the epidemic lacked foundations for managing cases to reduce the disease lethality. It was urgent to carry out studies that would indicate a model for predicting severe forms of influenza.

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Since the initial discovery of Paranthropus robustus at the site of Kromdraai in 1938, the hypodigm of this species has been expanded by subsequent work at the localities of Swartkrans and Drimolen, with a few fossils also known from Cooper's D, Gondolin and Sterkfontein Member 5. Beginning in 2014, systematic excavations at Kromdraai uncovered a large and previously unknown fossiliferous area, shedding light on Units O and P in the earliest part of the site's stratigraphic sequence. The aim of this paper is to provide detailed descriptions and illustrations of 30 P.

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Indigenous societies are known to have occupied the Amazon basin for more than 12,000 years, but the scale of their influence on Amazonian forests remains uncertain. We report the discovery, using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) information from across the basin, of 24 previously undetected pre-Columbian earthworks beneath the forest canopy. Modeled distribution and abundance of large-scale archaeological sites across Amazonia suggest that between 10,272 and 23,648 sites remain to be discovered and that most will be found in the southwest.

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Ontogeny provides critical information about the evolutionary history of early hominin adult morphology. We describe fossils from the southern African sites of Kromdraai and Drimolen that provide insights into early craniofacial development in the Pleistocene robust australopith . We show that while most distinctive robust craniofacial features appear relatively late in ontogeny, a few do not.

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Article Synopsis
  • Emerging arboviral diseases like Zika, dengue, and chikungunya have significant clinical severity and share the same mosquito vector, complicating diagnosis among adolescents.
  • This study focuses on identifying sociodemographic and environmental risk factors for these diseases in adolescents from Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza, using data from the ERICA cohort linked with disease registries.
  • Findings indicate that adolescents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are at higher risk for these diseases, while those attending school in the afternoon or in areas with satisfactory mosquito infestation levels have a lower risk.
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Objective: To examine early Homo sapiens fossils from the Late Pleistocene site of Klasies River Main Site, South Africa for evidence of hypercementosis. The specimens represent seven adult individuals dated to between 119,000 and 58,000 years ago. These observations are contextualized in relation to the incidences of hypercementosis among recent human populations and fossil human samples and the potential etiologies of hypercementosis.

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The COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil has highlighted the importance of the Brazilian Unified National Health System (SUS) and the limitations of the country's prevailing health system, consisting of the public and private sectors, in the context of financialized capitalism in which typical instabilities and crises are structurally determined. The article discusses the Brazilian health system under the aegis of financialized capitalism and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article contends that financialization as a systemic pattern of wealth increases the process of commodification of socioeconomic relations which is inherent to this system, making the State's provision of health services indispensable.

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Most fossil hominin species are sampled with spatial, temporal or anatomical biases that can hinder assessments of their paleodiversity, and may not yield genuine evolutionary signals. We use new fossils from the Kromdraai (Unit P) and Drimolen sites (South Africa) to provide insights into the paleodiversity of the Lower Pleistocene robust australopith, Paranthropus robustus. Our focus is the morphology of the temporal bone and the relationships between size and shape (allometry) of the semi-circular canals (SCC), an aspect that has not yet been investigated among southern African australopiths.

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Background: Yellow fever (YF) is an arbovirus with variable severity, including severe forms with high mortality. The vaccination is the most effective measure to protect against the disease. Non-serious and serious adverse events have been described in immunocompromised individuals, but previous studies have failed to demonstrate this association.

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The literature has few studies on the seasonality of tuberculosis (TB) in the southern hemisphere, entailing the fill of this knowledge gap. This study aims to analyze whether TB incidence in Brazilian capitals and the Federal District is seasonal. This is an ecological study of a time series (2001-2019) of TB cases, conducted with 26 capitals and the Federal District.

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We conducted a systematic review and a meta-analysis to assess the risk of serious adverse events in the elderly after yellow fever vaccination compared to the non-elderly population. We searched multiple databases and grey literature, and we selected research without language and publication date restrictions. Studies were analyzed in a descriptive way and meta-analyzed and expressed in terms of prevalence ratio and risk ratio with a 95% confidence interval, depending on the degree of heterogeneity found.

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The Kromdraai site in South Africa has yielded numerous early hominin fossils since 1938. As a part of recent excavations within Unit P, a largely complete early hominin calcaneus (KW 6302) was discovered. Due to its role in locomotion, the calcaneus has the potential to reveal important form/function relationships.

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Background: Rapid molecular methods such as the line probe assay (LPA) and Xpert® MTB/RIF assay (Xpert) have been recommended by the World Health Organization for drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) diagnosis. We conducted an interventional trial in DR-TB reference centers in Brazil to evaluate the impact of the use of LPA and Xpert.

Methods: Patients with DR-TB were eligible if their drug susceptibility testing results were available to the treating physician at the time of consultation.

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Arboviruses are diseases of worldwide importance in the field of communicable diseases. In Brazil, the reemergence of dengue and the emergence of chikungunya and Zika since 2014 have led to epidemic waves of great magnitude and rapid spread. However, their diffusion patterns vary and change over time.

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The high lipid content in porcine oocytes impairs in vitro embryo production (IVP). Here, we evaluated the influence of two different lipid modulators during in vitro maturation (IVM) on the embryo development and the lipid content of oocytes and embryos. In Experiment I, oocytes were exposed to 50 μM docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) with (+) or without (-) the presence of porcine follicular fluid (pFF).

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The morphology and variability of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) hominin fossils from Klasies River Main Site have been the focus of investigation for more than four decades. The mandibular remains have figured prominently in discussions relating to robusticity, size dimorphism, and symphyseal morphology. Variation in corpus size between the robust SAM-AP 6223 and the diminutive SAM-AP 6225 mandibles is particularly impressive, and the difference between the buccolingual diameters of their Ms significantly exceeds recent human sample variation.

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