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Sarcocystis levinei infection in Philippine water buffaloes (Bubalus bubalis)

Claveria FG, Cruz MJ

Parasitol Int, 2000 Jan;48(3):243-7.
PMID: 11227764

Ultrastructural studies of sarcocysts obtained from Philippine water buffaloes revealed the presence of the commonly reported macroscopic species, Sarcocystis fusiformis, and the microscopic species Sarcocystis levinei (Dissanaike A, Kan S. Studies on Sarcocystis in Malaysia. I: Sarcocystis levinei n.sp. from the water buffalo Bubalus bubalis. Z Parasitenkd 1978;55:127-38), (Huong L, Dubey J, Uggla A. Redescription of Sarcocystis levinei Dissanaike and Kan, 1978 (Protozoa: Sarcocystidae) of the water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis). J Parasitol 1997;83:1148-52). The globular to oval microscopic cysts commonly observed in the muscles of the diaphragm and neck exhibit compartmentalized arrangement of zoites with septal partitions and measure 13-48 microns in diameter. The parasitophorous vacuolar membrane of sarcocyst bears minute and hair-like villar protrusions measuring 2.3-2.75 microns long emanating at certain distances from the primary cyst wall and lack microfilaments. Villar protrusions have expanded to dome-shaped base measuring 0.33-1.6 microns long by 0.22-1.0 micron wide, and intermediate and tapering distal segments bent approximately 90 degrees and run parallel to the cyst surface. The distal segments at some areas join to form conical tufts. The primary cyst wall bears numerous prominent undulations that are arranged in small clusters. The ground substance is 0.42-0.57 micron thick. This paper documents the first report of S. levinei in Philippine water buffaloes possessing the type 7 cyst wall.
Fulltext First report of Paramyrothecium roridum causing leaf spot and stem rot diseases on Coffea arabica in Peru

Huamán-Pilco AF, Huamán-Pilco J, Torres-de la Cruz M, Oliva-Cruz SM, Díaz-Valderrama JR

Plant Dis, 2022 May 06.
PMID: 35522958 DOI: 10.1094/PDIS-03-22-0517-PDN

Peru is the ninth exporter of coffee (Coffea arabica) in the world, and Amazonas is among its most important producing departments (INIA 2019). In July 2021, in the nursery of the "Instituto de Investigación para el Desarrollo Sustentable de Ceja de Selva", in Huambo district (6° 26' 11.19'' S; 77° 31' 24.18'' W), four-month-old coffee seedlings cv. Catimor with 0.5-2.0 cm brown concentric leaf spots and rotten stems, bearing white mycelial tufts and black sporodochia, were observed at 30% incidence. Infected seedlings were collected. Foliar sections of 2-3 mm with infected tissue were surfaced disinfected in 2% NaClO and transferred onto Petri plates containing potato dextrose agar medium (PDA). The plates were incubated at 25° C for 7 days. We obtained three isolates (INDES-AFHP61, INDES-AFHP62 and INDES-AFHP66) with similar morphology from different seedlings. Colonies (16-17 mm diam.) formed concentric rings with white aerial mycelium, giving rise to viscous and olivaceous dark green sporodochial conidiomata. Conidia (4.82-5.77 × 1.34-1.65 µm; n = 30) were cylindric, hyaline, smooth, and aseptate. These morphological features correspond to Paramyrothecium spp. (Lombard et al. 2016). The DNA of isolates was extracted using the Wizard® Purification Kit (Promega Corp., Madison, Wisconsin), and the internal transcribed spacer 1 and 2 intervening the 5.8S subunit rDNA region (Accession numbers: OM892830 to OM892832), and part of the second-largest subunit of the RNA polymerase II, the calmodulin and the β-tubulin genes (OM919453 to OM919461) were sequenced following Lombard et al. (2016). All sequences had a percent identity greater than or equal to 99% to corresponding sequences of the P. roridum type specimen (CBS 357.89). Additionally, a multilocus Maximum Likelihood phylogenetic analysis incorporating sequence data from previous relevant studies (Lombard et al. 2016; Pinruan et al. 2022) grouped our three isolates together with the type and other specimens of P. roridum in a strongly supported clade, confirming the species identification. To evaluate pathogenicity, four-month-old coffee seedlings cv. Catimor were sprayed with 10 mL of conidial suspensions at 1 x 106 /mL. A set of control seedlings were inoculated with sterile water. Seedlings were maintained in a humidity chamber at 25 °C. After 15 days brown concentric foliar spots, stem rotting, mycelial tufts and sporodochia (same symptoms and signs observed originally at the nursery) arose in the non-control seedlings. The pathogen was re-isolated on PDA, confirming P. roridum was the causal agent of leaf spot and stem rot diseases of coffee. Paramyrothecium roridum has wide geographic distribution and host range (Lombard et al. 2016). This pathogen was reported to infect C. arabica in Mexico and Coffea sp. in Colombia (Pelayo-Sánchez et al. 2017; Lombard et al. 2016; Huaman et al. 2021). It was also reported in Africa infecting soybeans (Haudenshield et al. 2018), in Brazil infecting Tectona grandis (Borges et al. 2018), in Egypt infecting strawberries (Soliman 2020), and in Malaysia infecting Eichhornia crassipes (Hassan et al. 2021). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time P. roridum is reported on coffee in Peru.
Radiation Oncology Research in Asia: Current Status and a Peep Into the Future From the Federation of Asian Organizations for Radiation Oncology

Chopra S, Gupta A, Aoyama H, Wu HG, Mahmood H, Tharavichitkul E, et al.

JCO Glob Oncol, 2023 Jun;9:e2300002.
PMID: 37384859 DOI: 10.1200/GO.23.00002

PURPOSE: This survey was conducted to assess the current research practices among the 14 members of the Federation of Asian Organizations for Radiation Oncology (FARO) committee, to inform measures for research capacity building in these nations.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: A 19-item electronic survey was sent to two research committee members from the 14 representative national radiation oncology organizations (N = 28) that are a part of FARO.
RESULTS: Thirteen of the 14 member organizations (93%) and 20 of 28 members (71.5%) responded to the questionnaire. Only 50% of the members stated that an active research environment existed in their country. Retrospective audits (80%) and observational studies (75%) were the most common type of research conducted in these centers. Lack of time (80%), lack of funding (75%), and limited training in research methodology (40%) were cited as the most common hindrances in conducting research. To promote research initiatives in the collaborative setting, 95% of the members agreed to the creation of site-specific groups, with head and neck (45%) and gynecological cancers (25%) being the most preferred disease sites. Projects focused on advanced external beam radiotherapy implementation (40%), and cost-effectiveness studies (35%) were cited as some of the potential areas for future collaboration. On the basis of the survey results, after result discussion and the FARO officers meeting, an action plan for the research committee has been created.
CONCLUSION: The results from the survey and the initial policy structure may allow facilitation of radiation oncology research in the collaborative setting. Centralization of research activities, funding support, and research-directed training are underway to help foster a successful research environment in the FARO region.
Evaluation of multiple breast cancer polygenic risk score panels in women of Latin American heritage

Huang X, Lott PC, Hu D, Zavala VA, Jamal ZN, Vidaurre T, et al.

Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, 2024 Dec 03.
PMID: 39625644 DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-24-1247

BACKGROUND: A substantial portion of the genetic predisposition for breast cancer is explained by multiple common genetic variants of relatively small effect. A subset of these variants, which have been identified mostly in individuals of European and Asian ancestry, have been combined to construct a polygenic risk score (PRS) to predict breast cancer risk, but the prediction accuracy of existing PRSs in Hispanic/Latinx individuals (H/L) remain relatively low. We assessed the performance of several existing PRS panels with and without addition of H/L specific variants among self-reported H/L women.
METHODS: PRS performance was evaluated using multivariable logistic regression and the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC).
RESULTS: Both European and Asian PRSs performed worse in H/L samples compared to original reports. The best European PRS performed better than the best Asian PRS in pooled H/L samples. European PRSs had decreased performance with increasing Indigenous American (IA) ancestry while Asian PRSs had increased performance with increasing IA ancestry. The addition of 2 H/L SNPs increased performance for all PRSs, most notably in the samples with high IA ancestry and did not impact the performance of PRSs in individuals with lower IA ancestry.
CONCLUSIONS: A single PRS that incorporates risk variants relevant to the multiple ancestral components of individuals from Latin America, instead of a set of ancestry specific panels, could be used in clinical practice.
IMPACT: Results highlight the importance of population-specific discovery and suggest a straightforward approach to integrate ancestry specific variants into PRS for clinical application.