Publications by authors named "Rafael Goncalves"

There is an ongoing need for scalable tools to aid researchers in both retrospective and prospective standardization of discrete entity types-such as disease names, cell types, or chemicals-that are used in metadata associated with biomedical data. When metadata are not well-structured or precise, the associated data are harder to find and are often burdensome to reuse, analyze, or integrate with other datasets due to the upfront curation effort required to make the data usable-typically through retrospective standardization and cleaning of the (meta)data. With the goal of facilitating the task of standardizing metadata-either in bulk or in a one-by-one fashion, e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The integration of electronic health record (EHR) data with other resources is crucial for rare disease research, relying on the compatibility of ontologies like ICD (for clinical diagnoses) and HPO (for phenotypes).
  • An analysis showed only 2.2% of ICD codes have direct mappings to HPO in UMLS, and less than 50% of ICD codes in a real-world EHR dataset are mapped to HPO, indicating gaps, especially for rarer conditions.
  • The study concludes that interoperability between ICD and HPO is limited, with a need for more established mapping conventions beyond UMLS to enhance data integration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Lactoferrin (Lf) is an important immunomodulator in infections caused by different agents. During SARS-CoV-2 infection, Lf can hinder or prevent virus access to the intracellular environment. Severe cases of COVID-19 are related to increased production of cytokines, accompanied by a weak type 1 interferon response.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

As the level of vehicle automation increases, drivers are more likely to engage in non-driving related tasks which take their hands, eyes, and/or mind away from the driving task. Consequently, there has been increased interest in creating Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS) that are valid and reliable for detecting elements of driver state. Workload is one element of driver state that has remained elusive within the literature.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Neurogenic bladder was first confirmed as a urological sequela of Congenital Zika Syndrome (CZS) in 2018. Further clinical-epidemiological evidence also confirmed neurogenic bowel dysfunction and cryptorchidism. To strengthen the care for these children, the Congenital Zika Virus Bladder and Bowel Sequelae Network (RASZ in Brazilian) was created, including six integrated centers in Brazil.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study aimed to evaluate surface roughness (Sa), roughness profile (Rv), and enamel wear after brushing with different whitening toothpastes and charcoal powders. Sixty (n = 10) bovine enamel blocks (6 × 6 × 3 mm) were randomly distributed into six groups according to toothpaste type: regular toothpaste (CONT), toothpaste containing 2% hydrogen peroxide (HP), toothpaste containing titanium dioxide (TiO2), toothpaste containing charcoal (COAL), toothpaste containing charcoal and TiO2 (COAL+TiO2), and activated charcoal powder (COAL_PWD). Each block was subjected to 30,000 reciprocal cycles at a 1:3 proportion slurry.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chagas disease is a parasitosis caused by . Cruzain, the major cysteine protease from , is an excellent therapeutic target in the search for antichagasic drugs. It is important in the role of cell invasion, replication, differentiation, and metabolism of the parasite.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Bovine lactoferrin (bLf) exhibits significant antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2, including the omicron variant, potentially providing a new therapeutic option.
  • Both unsaturated (apo-bLf) and saturated (holo-bLf) forms reduced virus infection by around 70% when present during infection, with effectiveness peaking in the early stages of infection.
  • Holo-bLf showed slightly better efficacy in preventing virus entry compared to apo-bLf, indicating that bLf could be a promising treatment for COVID-19 due to its low toxicity and significant inhibitory effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The literature of human and other host-associated microbiome studies is expanding rapidly, but systematic comparisons among published results of host-associated microbiome signatures of differential abundance remain difficult. We present BugSigDB, a community-editable database of manually curated microbial signatures from published differential abundance studies accompanied by information on study geography, health outcomes, host body site and experimental, epidemiological and statistical methods using controlled vocabulary. The initial release of the database contains >2,500 manually curated signatures from >600 published studies on three host species, enabling high-throughput analysis of signature similarity, taxon enrichment, co-occurrence and coexclusion and consensus signatures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Doryctobracon areolatus (Szépligeti) is an endoparasitoid and promising fruit fly control agent. The objective of the study was to determine the spatial (horizontal and vertical) and temporal dispersion of D. areolatus in the field.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The use of toxic baits has become one of the main methods of management of fruit flies in Brazil. The application of toxic baits may cause side effects on the native parasitoid Doryctobracon areolatus (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). Based on the results, formulations made from the food attractants 3% Biofruit, 1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bovine lactoferrin (bLf) is a multifunctional protein widely associated with anticancer activity. Prostate cancer is the second most frequent type of cancer worldwide. This study was aimed at evaluating the influence of bLf on cell viability, cell cycle progression, reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, and rate of apoptosis in the human prostate cancer cell line (DU-145).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The goal of this paper was to measure the effect of Human-Machine Interface (HMI) information and guidance on drivers' gaze and takeover behaviour during transitions of control from automation. The motivation for this study came from a gap in the literature, where previous research reports improved performance of drivers' takeover based on HMI information, without considering its effect on drivers' visual attention distribution, and how drivers also use the information available in the environment to guide their response. This driving simulator study investigated drivers' lane-changing behaviour after resumption of control from automation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Lactoferrin (Lf) is an iron-binding glycoprotein and a component of many external secretions with a wide diversity of functions. Structural studies are important to understand the mechanisms employed by Lf to exert so varied functions. Here, we used guanidine hydrochloride and high hydrostatic pressure to cause perturbations in the structure of bovine Lf (bLf) in apo and holo (unsaturated and iron-saturated, respectively) forms, and analyzed conformational changes by intrinsic and extrinsic fluorescence spectroscopy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To evaluate different restorative techniques for non-carious cervical lesions (NCCLs) and the activity of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) in gingival crevicular fluid.

Materials And Methods: Two hundred restorations were performed in 50 patients using resin composite restorative system without (I) and with selective enamel conditioning (II) and resin-modified glass-ionomer cement without (III) and with EDTA pretreatment (IV). Gingival crevicular fluid samples were collected in 15 patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Children with Congenital Zika Syndrome (CZS) present structural cortical changes that may compromise the integrity of their connections with urinary and digestive systems, causing bowel and bladder dysfunctions.

Objective: To evaluate bladder and bowel dysfunction (BBD) in children with CZS.

Study Design: This is an observational cross-sectional study of a series of CZS cases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Lactoferrin is part of the innate immune system, with antiviral activity against numerous DNA and RNA viruses. Rhinoviruses, the leading cause of the common cold, are associated with exacerbation of respiratory illnesses such as asthma. Here, we explored the effect of bovine lactoferrin (BLf) on RV-B14 infectivity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), termed COVID-19, has been highlighted as the most important infectious disease of our time, without a vaccine and treatment available until this moment, with a big impact on health systems worldwide, and with high mortality rates associated with respiratory viral disease. The medical and scientific communities have also been confronted by an urgent need to better understand the mechanism of host-virus interaction aimed at developing therapies and vaccines. Since this viral disease can trigger a strong innate immune response, causing severe damage to the pulmonary tract, immunotherapies have also been explored as a means to verify the immunomodulatory effect and improve clinical outcomes, whilst the comprehensive COVID-19 immunology still remains under investigation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Metadata that are structured using principled schemas and that use terms from ontologies are essential to making biomedical data findable and reusable for downstream analyses. The largest source of metadata that describes the experimental protocol, funding, and scientific leadership of clinical studies is ClinicalTrials.gov.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The aim of this study was to explore the impact of the interaction between an MDP-based universal adhesive system in etch-and-rinse mode and two proteolytic inhibitors on the longevity of restorations bonded to artificially-affected-dentin substrates. 90 sound human third molars were randomly distributed into three groups according to the substrate: N-no challenges-control (stored in artificial saliva), ACD-artificial caries dentin (6 h DE + 18 h-RE/5 days + 48 h RE) and ERO-artificial erosion dentin (3 × 5 min/5 days with orange juice). They were further redistributed according to dentin pretreatment: W- water (control), CHX-2% digluconate chlorhexidine and E64- 5 μM E64-Trans-Epoxysuccinyl-L-Leucylamido-(4-guanidino) butane, which resulted in the following 9 groups (n = 10): N-W, N-CHX, N-E64, ACD-W, ACD-CHX, ACD-E64, ERO-W, ERO-CHX and ERO-E64.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This driving simulator study compared drivers' eye movements during a series of lane-changes, which required different levels of motor control for their execution. Participants completed 12 lane-changing manoeuvres in three drives, categorised by degree of manual engagement with the driving task: Fully Manual Drive, Manual Intervention Required, Fully Automated Drive (Manual drive, Partial automation, Full automation). For Partial automation, drivers resumed control from the automated system and changed lane manually.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study aimed to analyze the interaction of a MDP-based universal dentin bonding system (DBS) with Er, Cr: YSGG laser irradiation, measuring the microtensile bond strength to dentin over a six-month period. The experimental design involved three factors: DBS (Adper Scotchbond Universal; Clearfil SE Bond, Adper Scotchbond Multipurpose and Adper Single Bond 2), laser (Control and Er, Cr: YSGG), and time (initial- 7 days and 6 months). Eighty dentin samples from molars were prepared (n=10) with laser irradiation after primer and DBS application.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The incorporation of functional monomers and proteolytic inhibitors into adhesive systems have shown to be promising strategies to improve the longevity of adhesive restorations. The aim of this study was to evaluate the long-term bonding performance and anti-gelatinolytic effect of a 10-MDP-based universal adhesive system applied in combination with 2% chlorhexidine digluconate (CHX). For that, this study assessed the resin-dentin bond strength and the in situ gelatinolytic activity profile at the adhesive interface at initial and after 6 month of storage.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The genus Paracoccidioides consists of thermodymorphic fungi responsible for Paracoccidioidomycosis (PCM), a systemic mycosis that has been registered to affect ~10 million people in Latin America. Biogeographical data subdivided the genus Paracoccidioides in five divergent subgroups, which have been recently classified as different species. Genomic sequencing of five Paracoccidioides isolates, representing each of these subgroups/species provided an important framework for the development of post-genomic studies with these fungi.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The Docker project is providing a promising strategy for the development of virtualization systems in bioinformatics. However, implementation, management, and launching of Docker containers is not entirely trivial for users not fully familiarized with command line interfaces. This has prompted the development of graphical user interfaces to facilitate the interaction of inexperienced users with Docker environments.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF