Perspective on Emerging Micronutrient Deficiencies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The moral imperative of public health systems is to maximize the health and welfare of the population to the extent possible. Constraints often include a lack of resources, political will, popular acceptance, or an acceptable safety margin. Major agencies have established iron, iodine, and vitamin A as the principal elements for micronutrients, with folate and zinc on the second plane.

An Evaluation of High-Risk HPV in Squamous Cell Carcinomas of the Lip in a South African Cohort.

Background: To determine the prevalence of HR-HPV in a series of lip SCC from South African patients, using currently accepted HPV-testing methodologies and to define the clinical and histomorphologic features of HPV-associated lip SCC.

Methods: Fifty SCC of lip and 50 control cases were tested for HR-HPV using p16 and HR-HPV DNA PCR. p16-equivocal/positive and HPV DNA PCR-positive SCC were further evaluated for the expression of HPV-16 and HPV-18 mRNA transcripts using reverse transcription quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) to confirm transcriptionally active HPV.

Human milk microbiome: associations with maternal diet and infant growth.

Introduction: Ingestion of human milk (HM) is identified as a significant factor associated with early infant gut microbial colonization, which has been associated with infant health and development. Maternal diet has been associated with the HM microbiome (HMM). However, a few studies have explored the associations among maternal diet, HMM, and infant growth during the first 6 months of lactation.

Human milk microbial species are associated with infant head-circumference during early and late lactation in Guatemalan mother-infant dyads.

Human milk contains abundant commensal bacteria that colonize and establish the infant's gut microbiome but the association between the milk microbiome and head circumference during infancy has not been explored. For this cross-sectional study, head-circumference-for-age-z-scores (HCAZ) of vaginally delivered breastfed infants were collected from 62 unrelated -Mayan mothers living in eight remote rural communities in the Western Highlands of Guatemala during two stages of lactation, 'early' (6-46 days postpartum, = 29) or 'late' (109-184 days postpartum, = 33). At each stage of lactation, infants were divided into HCAZ ≥ -1 SD (early: = 18; late: = 14) and HCAZ < -1 SD (early: = 11; late: = 19).