We therefore urge great care when deriving activity budgets from leg-mounted TDRs, but nonetheless recommend using leg-mounted TDRs to infer activity budgets from diving seabirds, particularly for longer deployments.”
“Background: Blood group O protects

African children against severe malaria and has reached high prevalence in malarious regions. However, its role in malaria in pregnancy is ambiguous. In 839 delivering Ghanaian women, associations of ABO blood groups with Plasmodium falciparum infection were examined. Methods: Plasmodium falciparum infection was diagnosed in placental blood samples by microscopy selleck chemical and PCR assays. Present or past infection was defined as the detection of parasitaemia or haemozoin by microscopy, or a positive PCR result. Blood groups were inferred from genotyping rs8176719 (indicating the O allele) and rs8176746/rs8176747

(distinguishing the B allele from the A allele). Results: The majority of women had blood group O (55.4%); present or past P. falciparum infection was seen in 62.3% of all women. Among multiparae, the blood groups had no influence on P. falciparum infection. In contrast, primiparae with blood group O had significantly less present or past infection than women with non-O blood groups (61.5 vs 76.2%, P = 0.007). In multivariate analysis, the odds of present or past placental P. falciparum infection were reduced by 45% in blood group O primiparae (aOR, 0.55 [95% CI, 0.33-0.94]). Conclusions: selleck chemicals llc The present study shows a clear protective effect of blood group O against malaria Selleckchem LY3039478 in primiparae. This accords with findings in severe malaria and in vitro results. The data underline the relevance of host genetic protection among primiparae, i.e. the high-risk group for malaria in pregnancy, and contribute to the understanding of high O allele frequencies in Africa.”
“Background/Aims Emerging evidence in the literature suggests a positive association between serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D], a standard indicator of vitamin D status,

and survival in certain types of cancer. We investigated this relationship in newly diagnosed stage IV prostate cancer patients. Methods A consecutive cohort of 125 newly diagnosed stage IV prostate cancer patients underwent a baseline serum 25(OH)D evaluation prior to receiving any treatment at our institution between January 2008 and December 2011. We used the vitamin D categories of “deficient ( smaller than 20 ng/ml)”, “insufficient (20 to 32 ng/ml)”, and “sufficient ( bigger than 32 ng/ml)”. Cox regression was used to evaluate the prognostic significance of serum 25(OH)D after adjusting for relevant confounders. Results Mean age at diagnosis was 60 years. Of the 125 patients, 32 (25.6%) were deficient, 49 (39.2%) were insufficient and 44 (35.2%) were sufficient in vitamin D at the time of diagnosis. The median survival in deficient, insufficient and sufficient cohorts was 47.8, 44.0 and 52.6 months respectively (p = 0.60).