Objective: To ascertain whether there are any geographic clusters of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and critically review 2 previous reports of these clusters.
Methods: A literature review of all epidemiologic surveys relevant to SLE published since 1966 was undertaken. This included a search of abstracts and reports, in addition to peer-reviewed publications.
Results: Two geographic clusters were identified in the literature. A report purporting that contaminated ground water in southwest Tucson, Arizona was associated with significantly increased symptoms of SLE was flawed since no patients were examined, discarded criteria were used, and incorrect definitions were employed by the nonrheumatologist authors. Another study, which identified a cluster in Nogales, Arizona, used generally valid methodology. However, the authors' conclusion that a 94/100,000 prevalence of SLE was evidence of an excessive increase in this 92% Hispanic/Native American community is not consistent with published surveys among Hispanic and Native American populations.
Conclusion: No valid claims of SLE geographic clusters have been published.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/art.1780381107 | DOI Listing |
Front Microbiol
December 2024
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Clinical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine and Health, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden.
Background: Methicillin-resistant (MRSA) has been an issue in healthcare since the 1960s. It was initially found only in healthcare facilities, but in the late 1990s it began to be seen with no healthcare connexion. The mechanisms of intercontinental and national spread are not fully understood, as sometimes novel outbreaks occur without any identifiable source or connexion to locally dominant clonal clusters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPeerJ
January 2025
Laboratorio de Interacciones Bióticas, Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Biológicas, Universidad Autónoma de Tlaxcala, San Felipe Ixtacuixtla, Tlaxcala, Mexico.
Background: Understanding the diversity and distribution of fungal communities at a regional scale is important since fungi play a crucial role in ecosystem functioning. Our study used environmental metagenomics to determine fungal communities in mountainous forest soils in the central highlands of Mexico.
Methods: We used four different bioinformatic workflows to profile fungal assemblages, .
Public Health Nutr
January 2025
SEANUTS Indonesian Team/Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia.
Objective: The South East Asian Nutrition Survey II Indonesia aimed to provide up-to-date data on dietary intake, nutritional and biochemical status of children aged 0·5-12 years in Indonesia 2019-2020.
Design: Multistage cluster sampling, stratified by geographical location.
Setting: Out of forty-six targeted districts in Indonesia, the study only covered twenty-one districts/cities in Java and Sumatera islands, Indonesia due to COVID-19 pandemic.
Inj Prev
January 2025
School of Transportation and Logistics Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Introduction: Previous research usually focused on high-frequency crash clusters (surrounded by high-frequency crashes), which overlooked outlier locations where high-frequency crashes were surrounded by low-frequency crashes. Neglecting spatiotemporal outliers might overlook critical factors for safety improvements.
Methods: Using pedestrian-vehicle crash data in North Carolina from 2007 to 2019, this study proposes an enhanced spatiotemporal analysis framework (combined with Approximate Nearest Neighbour and the Global Moran I index) to distinguish spatiotemporal crash outliers from aggregated/dispersed patterns.
Acta Trop
January 2025
Professor, Department of Paediatrics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences [AIIMS], Bhubaneswar, Odisha.751019. Electronic address:
Spotted fever group Rickettsia (SFGR) infections remain largely under-investigated as causative agents of acute undifferentiated febrile illness (AUFI) in resource-limited settings. Few studies are available on the prevalence of SFGR infections in India, especially in eastern India. In a cross-sectional study conducted in 192 hospitalized adult and paediatric patients with AUFI, the frequency of SFGR using sequential PCR targeting genes encoding citrate synthase gene (gltA), 17 kDa lipoprotein precursor antigen (17kDa), outer membrane proteins A and B (omp A & omp B) was 6.
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