Genomic diversity of the human pathogen Paracoccidioides across the South American continent.

Paracoccidioidomycosis (PCM) is a life-threatening systemic mycosis widely reported in the Gran Chaco ecosystem. The disease is caused by different species from the genus Paracoccidioides, which are all endemic to South and Central America. Here, we sequenced and analyzed 31 isolates of Paracoccidioides across South America, with particular focus on isolates from Argentina and Paraguay.

[Role of HLA-DR and HLA-DQ alleles in multibacillary leprosy and paucibacillary leprosy in the province of Chaco (Argentina)].

Objectives: Segregation analyses in several populations have suggested a relationship between specific human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class II alleles and the development of different types of leprosy. The aim of this study was to determine the frequency of HLA class II DR and DQ alleles among leprosy patients in Chaco province, northeast Argentina, in an effort to determine whether these alleles might be involved in the development of the multibacillary (MB) and paucibacillary (PB) forms of leprosy.

Patients And Methods: Samples from 89 leprosy patients (MB = 70, PB = 19) and 112 healthy control subjects were analyzed.

Analysis of the clonal relationship among clinical isolates of Salmonella enterica serovar Infantis by different typing methods.

Salmonella Infantis has been the second most common serovar in Argentina in the last two years, being isolated mostly from paediatric hospitalised patients. In order to determine the clonal relationship among Salmonella Infantis strains, we examined 15 isolates from paediatric patient faeces in Argentina (12 geographically related and 3 geographically non-related) by using antimicrobial susceptibility, plasmid profiling, repetitive extragenic palindromic (REP) PCR, enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC) PCR, and low-frequency restriction analysis of chromosomal DNA by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE). Four Spanish strains were included as controls of clonal diversity in molecular techniques.