Background: In Ecuador, cervical cancer is the third most common cancer among women and the second most common cause of cancer-related death in women. Although HPV represents a serious public health problem worldwide, the information about its prevalence and genotypes in remote communities of Ecuador is limited. The aim of this study was to determine the distribution of HPV genotypes among ethnic minority women from two remote communities of the northwestern region of Ecuador: Afro-Ecuadorians and Chachis (Amerindian group).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFis a foodborne pathogen that can produce serious, even fatal, infections. Among other foods, it can be found in unpasteurized dairy and ready-to-eat products. Surveillance of is of great interest since sources of infection are difficult to determine due to the long incubation period, and because the symptoms of listeriosis are similar to other diseases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFsubspecies is one of the most important foodborne pathogens and the causative agent of salmonellosis, which affects both humans and animals producing numerous infections every year. The study and understanding of its epidemiology are key to monitoring and controlling these bacteria. With the development of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) technologies, surveillance based on traditional serotyping and phenotypic tests of resistance is being replaced by genomic surveillance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCervical cancer is the fourth most common type of cancer in women. Worldwide, it is a public health problem with around 604,127 women diagnosed per year and 341,831 deaths. Cervical cancer and persistent high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infection are highly associated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLeptospirosis is the most common zoonosis worldwide, and is increasingly common in poor urban communities, where there is inadequate sewage disposal and abundance of domestic and peridomestic animals. There are many risk factors associated with the disease, such as contaminated water exposure, close contact with animals, floods, recreational activities related to water, wet agriculture. The symptoms of leptospirosis are common to other infectious diseases and, if not treated, it can lead to meningitis, liver failure, kidney damage and death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOne major health issue is the microbial and chemical contamination of natural freshwater, particularly in Latin American countries, such as Ecuador, where it is still lacking wastewater treatment plants. This study analyzed the water quality in twelve rivers of Ecuador (Coastal, Andean, and Amazonian regions). All rivers showed levels of E.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFListeria monocytogenes is one of the most important bacteria associated with foodborne diseases, soft cheese being an important L. monocytogenes vehicle. In Ecuador, soft cheese is consumed in 84.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMapping of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) reads to a single arbitrary reference genome is a frequently used approach in microbial genomics. However, the choice of a reference may represent a source of errors that may affect subsequent analyses such as the detection of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and phylogenetic inference. In this work, we evaluated the effect of reference choice on short-read sequence data from five clinically and epidemiologically relevant bacteria (Klebsiella pneumoniae, Legionella pneumophila, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Serratia marcescens).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFis one of the most important foodborne pathogens around the world. In the last years, . serovar Infantis has become an important emerging pathogen in many countries, often as multidrug resistant clones.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFoodborne Pathog Dis
January 2021
is among the most important foodborne pathogens. In Ecuador, there is limited information about non-typhoidal occurrence in raw meats, its serotype distribution, and antimicrobial resistance. In this study, we addressed this issue in 1095 retail fresh meats (chicken, pork, veal, lamb, beef, and turkey) in Quito by performing a traditional culture methodology and molecular detection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman Papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection worldwide and it is responsible for most cases of uterine cancer. In Ecuador there is limited information about HPV types (and variants) in cancerous lesions; however, identifying the type-specific HPV prevalence in cervical lesions of women living in Ecuador is important to better predict the impact of HPV prophylactic vaccination in this country. We studied the prevalence of HPV types in cervical cancerous or precancerous lesions from 164 Ecuadorian women and found that 86.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Burkholderia cepacia has been linked to healthcare-associated infections and colonization caused by contamination of alcohol-free mouthwash used in patients undergoing mechanical ventilation. The purpose of our study was to establish the source of a clustering of healthcare-associated B. cepacia isolates in patients on mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit (ICU).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
September 2003
The B subunit of Escherichia coli heat labile enterotoxin (LT-B) is a potent oral immunogen with potential for use as a vaccine, a carrier molecule to deliver antigens to gut-associated lymphoid tissues, and possibly an adjuvant to make coadministered vaccines more effective. LT-B produced in plants was shown to be functional and immunogenic in animals and humans. In this work, we show that maize-derived LT-B is strongly associated with starch granules in endosperm.
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