Nielsen-saines

OBJECTIVES: Research on typically developing (TD) children and those with neurodevelopmental disorders and genetic syndromes was targeted. Specifically, studies on autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome, Rett syndrome, fragile X syndrome, cerebral palsy, Angelman syndrome, tuberous sclerosis complex, Williams-Beuren syndrome, Cri-du-chat syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, and West syndrome were searched. The objectives are to review observational and computational studies on the emergence of (pre-)babbling vocalisations and outline findings on acoustic characteristics of early verbal functions...

HPTN 052 was a multi-country clinical trial of cART for preventing heterosexual HIV-1 transmission. The study allowed participation of pregnant women and provided access to cART and contraceptives. We explored associations between pregnancy and clinical measures of HIV disease stage and progression. Of 869 women followed for 5.70 (SD = 1.62) years, 94.7% were married/cohabitating, 96% initiated cART, and 76.3% had >2 past pregnancies. Of 337 women who experienced pregnancy, 89.3% were from countries with lower contraceptive coverage, 56...

Histoplasmosis is the most common endemic fungal infection in the USA. The majority of cases are asymptomatic and have clear exposure to endemic regions. In contrast, we present an adolescent immunocompromised patient with systemic and relatively non-specific symptoms including abdominal pain, weight loss, lower extremity edema, and scabbing skin lesions, without known exposure to endemic areas for histoplasmosis. Histologic analysis of gastrointestinal and skin biopsies eventually revealed a diagnosis of disseminated histoplasmosis; the patient was successfully treated with amphotericin B followed by itraconazole maintenance therapy...

OBJECTIVES: To identify factors associated with adverse maternal outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Single-center prospective cohort study at a maternity department in a public general hospital in Rio de Janeiro. All pregnant women evaluated for emergency care, for labor and delivery, for respiratory symptoms, for obstetrical or medical reasons between May 2020 to March 2022 at the participating institution were offered enrollment. The endpoint was maternal mortality or ICU admission...

BACKGROUND: Pregnancy loss is poorly understood, but infection may be a risk factor. Few studies have evaluated pregnancy loss among women living with HIV in the era of potent combination antiretroviral therapy. OBJECTIVE: We hypothesize that maternal HIV and syphilis infection lead to increased risk of pregnancy loss, including both miscarriage and stillbirth. This study aimed to assess trends and possible predictors of spontaneous miscarriage and stillbirth among women living with HIV in a cohort of nearly 56,000 deliveries at a major referral institution in a city with the highest prevalence of HIV in Brazil...

The extent to which perinatally HIV-infected children, following cART initiation, develop a low proviral reservoir burden over time, as measured by HIV DNA droplet-digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) and the effect on HIV antibody is not well characterized. We measured proviral HIV DNA and plasma RNA virus load (VL) in 37 perinatally HIV-infected children at 6 months of age who initiated stable cART. At 6-11 years of age, HIV proviral DNA, HIV VL (RNA), and HIV antibody by Western Blot (WB) were assessed...

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), responsible for the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, causes respiratory failure and damage to multiple organ systems. The emergence of viral variants poses a risk of vaccine failures and prolongation of the pandemic. However, our understanding of the molecular basis of SARS-CoV-2 infection and subsequent COVID-19 pathophysiology is limited. In this study, we have uncovered a critical role for the evolutionarily conserved Hippo signaling pathway in COVID-19 pathogenesis...

Understanding functioning and disabilities in children with Congenital Zika Syndrome (CZS) is essential for health planning. We describe disabilities present in children with CZS followed in a reference hospital in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, based on the biopsychosocial model of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). This was a cohort study of children >3 years of age with CZS. Disability was characterized through outcomes related to ICF components assessed via clinical and motor development evaluations...

The burden of arbovirus diseases in Brazil has increased within the past decade due to the emergence of chikungunya and Zika and endemic circulation of all four dengue serotypes. Changes in temperature and rainfall patterns may alter conditions to favor vector-host transmission and allow for cyclic re-emergence of disease. We sought to determine the impact of climate conditions on arbovirus co-circulation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. We assessed the spatial and temporal distributions of chikungunya, dengue, and Zika cases from Brazil's national notifiable disease information system (SINAN) and created autoregressive integrated moving average models (ARIMA) to predict arbovirus incidence accounting for the lagged effect of temperature and rainfall...

BACKGROUND: There are limited data on how COVID-19 severity, timing of infection, and subsequent vaccination impact transplacental transfer and persistence of maternal and infant antibodies. METHODS: In a longitudinal cohort of pregnant women with PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, maternal/infant sera were collected at enrollment, delivery/birth, and 6 months. Anti-SARS-CoV-2 spike IgG, IgM and IgA were measured by ELISA. RESULTS: 256 pregnant women and 135 infants were enrolled; 148 maternal and 122 neonatal specimens were collected at delivery/birth; 45 maternal and 48 infant specimens were collected at 6 months...

BACKGROUND: Reducing congenital syphilis has been the focus of Brazilian health programs for decades, yet the cases continue to increase. Although health interventions have targeted HIV screening and treatment, syphilis management continues to be challenging. Syphilis during pregnancy may enhance the HIV maternal seroconversion risk. The potential factors fueling the syphilis epidemic were evaluated in south Brazil, an area of high HIV or syphilis endemicity. OBJECTIVE: We hypothesized that ineffective treatment because of a lack of partner treatment, late presentation to care, and reinfection of previously treated mothers were potential drivers of syphilis mother-to-child transmission...

BACKGROUND: Recognition of viral invasion by innate antiviral immune system triggers activation of the type I interferon (IFN-I) and proinflammatory signaling pathways. Subsequently, IFN-I induction regulates expression of a group of genes known as IFN-I-stimulated genes (ISGs) to block viral infection. The tripartite motif containing 22 (TRIM22) is an ISG with strong antiviral functions. RESULTS: Here we have shown that the TRIM22 has been strongly upregulated both transcriptionally and translationally upon Zika virus (ZIKV) infection...

The 2022 monkeypox outbreak, caused by the zoonotic monkeypox virus, has spread across six WHO regions (the Americas, Africa, Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, Western Pacific and South-East Asia) and was declared a public health emergency of international concern on July 23, 2022. The global situation is especially concerning, given the atypically high rate of person-to-person transmission, suggesting viral evolution to an established human pathogen. Pregnant women are at heightened risk of vertical transmission of the monkeypox virus due to immune vulnerability, natural depletion of population immunity to smallpox among reproductive-age women, and because orthopoxviral cell entry mechanisms can overcome the typically viral-resistant syncytiotrophoblast barrier within the placenta...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVE: To characterize SARS-CoV-2 infection patterns in Los Angeles (L.A.) County youth followed at our institution during the first pandemic year. DESIGN AND METHODS: A prospective cohort of patients aged < 25 years with positive SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR between 03/13/2020 to 03/31/2021 was evaluated at a large L.A. County health network. Demographics, age distribution and disease severity were analyzed. RESULTS: There were 28,088 youth < 25 years of age tested for SARS-CoV-2 by RT-PCR, with 1,849 positives identified (7%)...

Knowledge of how congenital Zika syndrome (CZS) impacts motor development of children longitudinally is important to guide management. The objective of the present study was to describe the evolution of gross motor function in children with CZS in a Rio de Janeiro hospital. In children with CZS without arthrogryposis or other congenital osteoarticular malformations who were followed in a prospective cohort study, motor performance was evaluated at two timepoints using the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) and the Gross Motor Function Measurement test (GMFM-88)...

Little is known about the impact of congenital Zika virus (ZIKV) exposure on growth in the first years of life. In this prospective cohort study,201 ZIKV antenatally-exposed children were followed at a tertiary referral center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Eighty-seven were classified as congenital Zika syndrome (CZS) patients and 114 as not congenital Zika syndrome (NCZS); growth parameters were described and compared between groups and with WHO standard growth curves. Thirty-four (39%) newborns with CZS and seven (6%) NCZS were small for gestational age ( p &lt; 0...

An out-of-season H3N2 type A influenza epidemic occurred in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil during October-November 2021, in between the Delta and Omicron SARS-CoV-2 surges, which occurred in July-October 2021 and January-April 2022, respectively. We assessed the contribution of climate change and influenza immunization coverage in this unique, little publicized phenomenon. State weather patterns during the influenza epidemic were significantly different from the five preceding years, matching typical winter temperatures, associated with the out-of-season influenza...

Pregnant women at public medical centers in Porto Alegre, Brazil, were recruited for a study on screening and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). STIs were detected in 79 (23%) of 350 pregnant women and were found to be associated with infant low birth weight (adjusted odds ratio 5.8; 95% confidence interval 1.9-18).

SARS-CoV-2, responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, causes respiratory failure and damage to multiple organ systems. The emergence of viral variants poses a risk of vaccine failures and prolongation of the pandemic. However, our understanding of the molecular basis of SARS-CoV-2 infection and subsequent COVID-19 pathophysiology is limited. In this study, we have uncovered a critical role for the evolutionarily conserved Hippo signaling pathway in COVID-19 pathogenesis. Given the complexity of COVID-19 associated cell injury and immunopathogenesis processes, we investigated Hippo pathway dynamics in SARS-CoV-2 infection by utilizing COVID-19 lung samples, and human cell models based on pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (PSC-CMs) and human primary lung air-liquid interface (ALI) cultures...