Factors that Affect Performance of Clinical Breast Examination and Mammography Screening among Brazilian Women.

Background: In the Brazilian health system, community health facilities consist of multidisciplinary teams that focus on family health, whereas health centers treat mainly illnesses of registered patients. In the present study we compared socio-economic factors and performance of mammography screening (MS) and clinical breast exam (CBE),  respectively, among women who used both types of public health service centers.

Methods: The present study included 180 women aged ≥40 years, who used different health service centers within the same municipal district.

On a greedy approach for genome scaffolding.

Background: Scaffolding is a bioinformatics problem aimed at completing the contig assembly process by determining the relative position and orientation of these contigs. It can be seen as a paths and cycles cover problem of a particular graph called the "scaffold graph".

Results: We provide some NP-hardness and inapproximability results on this problem.

Treewidth-based algorithms for the small parsimony problem on networks.

Background: Phylogenetic reconstruction is one of the paramount challenges of contemporary bioinformatics. A subtask of existing tree reconstruction algorithms is modeled by the SMALL PARSIMONY problem: given a tree T and an assignment of character-states to its leaves, assign states to the internal nodes of T such as to minimize the parsimony score, that is, the number of edges of T connecting nodes with different states. While this problem is polynomial-time solvable on trees, the matter is more complicated if T contains reticulate events such as hybridizations or recombinations, i.

Risk factors for breast cancer and their association with molecular subtypes in a population of Northeast Brazil.

Background: The risk factors for breast cancer (BC) among women in Brazilian populations are poorly understood. To date, few Brazilian studies have addressed the potential association between risk factors and molecular BC subtypes. This case-control study aimed to identify risk factors for BC in a population of Northeast Brazil.

Haplotypes of single cancer driver genes and their local ancestry in a highly admixed long-lived population of Northeast Brazil.

Admixed populations have not been examined in detail in cancer genetic studies. Here, we inferred the local ancestry of cancer-associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and haplotypes of a highly admixed Brazilian population. SNP array was used to genotype 73 unrelated individuals aged 80-102 years.

Risk of Colorectal Cancer in a Brazilian Population is Differentially Associated with the Intake of Processed Meat and Vitamin E.

The incidence and mortality rates of colorectal cancer (CRC) in Northeast Brazil are increasing. To study the association between CRC and diet, data were obtained from 64 patients with CRC and 123 sex- and age-matched controls. The dietary details were recorded using a validated food frequency questionnaire.

Socioeconomic Factors and Health Status Disparities Associated with Difficulty in ADLs and IADLs among Long-Lived Populations in Brazil: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Objective: To evaluate the association between socioeconomic factors, health status, and Functional Capacity (FC) in the oldest senior citizens in a metropolis and a poor rural region of Brazil.

Method: Cross-sectional study of 417 seniors aged ≥80 years, data collected through Brazil's survey. FC assessed by self-reporting of difficulties in Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs).

Breast Cancer Risk Perception and Mammography Screening Behavior of Women in Northeast Brazil.

Previous studies suggest that education and income affect Brazilian women's breast cancer prevention behavior. The present study focused on the impact of perceived and estimated risk on mammography screening (MS) behavior. Information regarding socioeconomic variables and risk perception was obtained from 396 healthy women aged 40-79 years.

Shorter delay to treatment by integrated diagnostic services and NGO-provided support among breast cancer patients in two Brazilian referral centres.

Background: The diagnosis of breast cancer requires a complicated series of diagnostic exams. The present study addressed the delay of patients who used publicly and privately financed diagnostic services. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) donated diagnostic mammograms and biopsies.

The structure of first-cousin marriages in Brazil.

This paper deals with the frequency and structure of first-cousin marriages, by far the most important and frequent type of consanguineous mating in human populations. Based on the analysis of large amounts of data from the world literature and from large Brazilian samples recently collected, we suggest some explanations for the asymmetry of sexes among the parental sibs of first-cousin marriages. We suggest also a simple manner to correct the method that uses population surnames to assess the different Wright fixation indexes F, F and F taking into account not only alternative methods of surname transmission, but also the asymmetries that are almost always observed in the distribution of sexes among the parental sibs of first-cousins.

Availability of Diagnostic Services and their Impact on Patient Flow in Two Brazilian Referral Centres of Breast Cancer Treatment.

Background: System delay (SD) is a leading cause of advanced stage of disease and poor prognosis among Brazilian breast cancer patients.

Methods: Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier analysis were used to identify variables that contributed to SD among 128 breast cancer patients. Time intervals between first medical consultation and treatment initiation were compared among patients of two referral centres: Patients of a referral centre with outsourced (FAP), respectively, integrated (HNL) diagnostic services.

Differential Impact of Education Level, Occupation and Marital Status on Performance of the Papanicolaou Test among Women from Various Regions in Brazil.

Background: In Brazil, little is known regarding the underlying causes of differences among populations regarding socio-economic variables that affect women’s cervical cancer screening behavior. The present study focused on socio-economic variables that affect women’s performance of the Papanicolaou test, comparing two distinct Brazilian populations. Methods: We collected data regarding performance of the Papanicolaou test and socio-economic variables from 559 women in Mato Grosso do Sul (MS), in the Central East region, and 338 women in Paraíba (PB), in the Northeast region of Brazil.

Women's knowledge about risk factors of breast cancer in a Brazilian community.

Knowledge about risk factors for breast cancer was identified as an important variable that affects women's avoidance behavior and their screening performance. The present study assessed women's knowledge about risk factors and associated socio-economic variables. Data from 417 women aged 20-86 years were obtained in Caicó, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.

Increased Risk of Penile Cancer among Men Working in Agriculture.

Background: Previous Brazilian studies have indicated that working in agriculture could lead to an increased risk of penile cancer. The present descriptive study aimed at establishing a possible association between penile cancer and agricultural occupation. Materials and methods: Data on a total of 103 penile cancer patients were obtained from medical records of two reference centres for cancer treatment in the state of Paraíba, Northeast Brazil.

Differential Association of the Lifestyle-Related Risk Factors Smoking and Obesity with Triple Negative Breast Cancer in a Brazilian Population.

Background: A longer lifespan and changing lifestyle-related and reproductive risk factors have led to an increased incidence of breast cancer in Brazil. There have been few studies about associations of specific risk factors with molecular subtypes of the disease. The aim of the present study was to identify factors that modulate the risk of triple negative breast cancer.

Risk factors of breast cancer and knowledge about the disease: an integrative revision of Latin American studies.

The aim of this integrative review was to compare Latin American literature about risk and knowledge on breast cancer. Of 47 studies selected, 20 were about knowledge or awareness and 27 about risk of breast cancer. English was the dominant language in studies about risk, whereas studies about knowledge were mainly written in Spanish or Portuguese.

Resolution and reconciliation of non-binary gene trees with transfers, duplications and losses.

Summary: Gene trees reconstructed from sequence alignments contain poorly supported branches when the phylogenetic signal in the sequences is insufficient to determine them all. When a species tree is available, the signal of gains and losses of genes can be used to correctly resolve the unsupported parts of the gene history. However finding a most parsimonious binary resolution of a non-binary tree obtained by contracting the unsupported branches is NP-hard if transfer events are considered as possible gene scale events, in addition to gene origination, duplication and loss.

Knowledge about Risk Factors for Breast Cancer and Having a Close Relative with Cancer Affect the Frequency of Breast Self-Examination Performance.

Background: Breast cancer incidence and mortality rates are increasing in North-Eastern Brazil and the patients with the disease often presented at advanced stages. The present study was focused on identifying variables that affect women's frequency of breast self- examination (BSE) performance.

Materials And Methods: Data on BSE, socio-economic parameters and risk factors for breast cancer were obtained from 417 women from a community in North-Eastern Brazil by a self-informant method.

On the fixed parameter tractability of agreement-based phylogenetic distances.

Three important and related measures for summarizing the dissimilarity in phylogenetic trees are the minimum number of hybridization events required to fit two phylogenetic trees onto a single phylogenetic network (the hybridization number), the (rooted) subtree prune and regraft distance (the rSPR distance) and the tree bisection and reconnection distance (the TBR distance) between two phylogenetic trees. The respective problems of computing these measures are known to be NP-hard, but also fixed-parameter tractable in their respective natural parameters. This means that, while they are hard to compute in general, for cases in which a parameter (here the hybridization number and rSPR/TBR distance, respectively) is small, the problem can be solved efficiently even for large input trees.

Patient delays and system delays in breast cancer treatment in developed and developing countries.

Delays in treating breast cancer have been associated with a more advanced stage of the disease and a decrease in patient survival rates. The scope of this integrative review was to analyze the main causal factors and types of patient and system delays. The underlying causal factors of delays were compared among studies conducted in developing and developed countries.

Exact approaches for scaffolding.

This paper presents new structural and algorithmic results around the scaffolding problem, which occurs prominently in next generation sequencing. The problem can be formalized as an optimization problem on a special graph, the "scaffold graph". We prove that the problem is polynomial if this graph is a tree by providing a dynamic programming algorithm for this case.

Reproductive risk factors differ among breast cancer patients and controls in a public hospital of Paraiba, northeast Brazil.

The incidence and mortality rates of breast cancer in Northeast Brazil are increasing and little is known about prevailing reproductive factors contributing to this increase. A case-control study was conducted in a public hospital of Campina Grande, state of Paraiba, including 81 women with diagnosed invasive breast cancer and 162 age matched (±5 years) controls. Binominal logistic regression analysis was applied to estimate odds ratio (OR) and confidence intervals (CI) of risk factors.

Molecular breast cancer subtypes and therapies in a public hospital of northeastern Brazil.

Background: The frequencies of molecular breast cancer subtypes vary among different human populations. The Northeastern region of Brazil has a mixed population of African, Indigenous and European ancestry. This retrospective study investigated breast cancer subtypes and applied therapies in a public hospital of Northeastern Brazil.

Increased prevalence of inherited neuromuscular disorders due to endogamy in Northeast Brazil: the need of community genetics services.

The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of inherited neuromuscular disorders (NMDs) in eight communities in Northeast (NE) Brazil in which there was an elevated rate of inbreeding. A cross-sectional epidemiological study, using the key informant (KI) approach, was performed to estimate the prevalence of NMD among the 48,499 individuals living in these eight communities, located in the backlands of the Paraíba State. Twenty-seven individuals fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for inherited NMD, which means that 1 out of 1,796 inhabitants of this highly consanguineous population was affected by NMD.