Project description:Worldwide, there are 1,361,000 new cases of colorectal cancers (CRC) annually, with 694,000 deaths. However, the incidence varies by up to a factor of 10x between high and low incidence countries (eg. USA vs Mexico, incidence rate of 42.54 vs 7.44 / 100,000 inhabitants). Mexico is considered a low-incidence country, with 8,651 new cases and 4,694 deaths annually.
CRC is a preventable and detectable disease. Screening programs established in high-incidence countries have managed to reduce the incidence and mortality from this disease and it is considered a cost-effective strategy. In less developed countries where there are no screening programs for CRC, the highest number of deaths occurs despite having the lowest number of cases. It is recognized that a barrier to establishing a screening program in a country with low incidence and limited resources is cost-effectiveness.
The prevalence of Advanced Colorectal Neoplasia (ACN) detected by screening colonoscopy in a Mexican cohort of 1172 INNSZ patients was 2.9%. In the US the prevalence is 7.6%. The number of colonoscopies to be performed to detect ACN was estimated at 34 for Mexico and 13 for the US, which suggests that the cost-effectiveness of screening colonoscopy could be 3 times lower in our country.
In Mexico there is no national screening program for CRC. The eligible population (adults between 50 and 75 years old) for CRC screening is estimated in 20 million of Mexicans. It is recognized that Mexico does not have enough financial resources nor the infrastructure to screen the entire eligible population either by direct colonoscopy, or by FIT (fecal immunochemical test) followed by colonoscopy. With a 5% frequency of positive FIT, nearly 1,000,000 follow-up colonoscopies would be required annually in a population screening program.
An alternative could be to offer screening based on risk, which means only offering screening to the highest-risk population.
There are calculators to predict the risk of identifying ACN in a screening colonoscopy, however, none have been developed and validated in the Mexican population. The weight of the risk factors associated with ACN in the Mexican population could be different, so it is necessary to develop and validate an ACN risk calculator that allows the Mexican population to be stratified and to concentrate screening efforts on the population at highest risk.
Project description:Ammonia-oxidizing archaeal (AOA) amoA diversity and relative abundance in Gulf of Mexico sediments (0-2 cm) were investigated using a functional gene microarray; a two color array with a universal internal standard
Project description:<p>Residues from ancient artifacts can help identify which plant species were used for their psychoactive properties, providing important information regarding the deep-time co-evolutionary relationship between plants and humans. However, relying on the presence or absence of one or several biomarkers has limited the ability to confidently connect residues to particular plants. We describe a comprehensive metabolomics-based approach that can distinguish closely related species and provide greater confidence in species use determinations. An approximately 1430-year-old pipe from central Washington State not only contained nicotine, but also had strong evidence for the smoking of <em>Nicotiana quadrivalvis</em> and <em>Rhus glabra</em>, as opposed to several other species in this pre-contact pipe. Analysis of a post-contact pipe suggested use of different plants, including the introduced trade tobacco, <em>Nicotiana rustica</em>. Ancient residue metabolomics provides a new frontier in archaeo-chemistry, with greater precision to investigate the evolution of drug use and similar plant-human co-evolutionary dynamics.</p>
Project description:The discovery of white-opaque switching in natural MTLa/alpha isolates of Candida albicans sheds new light on the evolution of phenotypic plasticity and host adaptation.
Project description:The discovery of white-opaque switching in natural MTLa/alpha isolates of Candida albicans sheds new light on the evolution of phenotypic plasticity and host adaptation. Comparing gene expression of white and opaque cells of a MTL a/alpha strain
