What is the experience from previous mass gathering events? Lessons for Zika virus and the Olympics 2016.

All previous experiences from different mass gathering show that vaccine preventable diseases is the most important infections like influemza, hepatitis A, polio and meningitis. Three mass gathering held in Africa during the Ebola outbreak accepted participants from West Africa and was able to handle the theoretical risk without any incident. Therefore we believe that the Olympc games in Rio de Janeiro should not be canceled. The number of visitors to the games is a tine fraction (1%) of other visitors to Zika endemic con tries and it will have no measurable effect on the risk of spreading Zika virus, if the games was cancelled.

Histocompatibility alloantigens in psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. Evidence for the influence of multiple genes in the major histocompatibility complex.

The frequency of HLA-A, B, and Cw antigens as well as the antigens expressed preferentially on B cells and monocytes (DRw and Ia-like) was examined in a normal population and two related disease populations, psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. HLA antigens distinguishing the two disease populations were found. Psoriatic patients demonstrated an increase in frequency of HLA-A1, B17, and B13. Patients with psoriatic arthritis demonstrated an increased frequency of HLA-A26, B38, and DRw4. Antigens showing a common increase in frequency in the two disease populations were HLA-Cw6, DRw7, and Ia744. These results demonstrate genetic differences as well as similarities in the two populations of patients with the common clinical feature of psoriasis. In addition to the above analysis, we examined the association of individual alloantigens elevated in frequency in the diseased population. These same alloantigens were examined for association in the normal population. This analysis revealed HLA antigen associations in the two disease groups that differed from the association of several antigens in the normal population. The results suggest that at least two genetic factors, one mapping in the HLA-A, C-B region and one mapping in the HLA-B-DRw region are associated with the disease states. Thus, multiple factors controlled by genes in the major histocompatibility complex appear to contribute to the disease entities under investigation.