Epidemiological study in Brazilian women highlights that syphilis remains a public health problem.

Syphilis, an infectious disease considered a global public health concern, can cause stillbirths and neonatal deaths. This highlights the importance of continuous surveillance studies among women of reproductive age. A cross-sectional study was carried out to analyze the prevalence and risk factors associated with Treponema pallidum infection in women assisted by primary health care units in Dourados, a city located in Mato Grosso do Sul State, Brazil, which borders Paraguay. A questionnaire was applied to a population-based sample, blood samples were collected for syphilis testing and multivariable analyses were performed to screen associations with T. pallidum infection. The prevalence of T. pallidum infection was 6.04%. Bivariate analysis showed that women referring multiple sexual partners (c2: 6.97 [p=0.014]), income less 2 minimal wages (c2: 15.93 [p=0.003]), who did not have high school (c2: 12.64 [p=0.005]), and reporting history of STIs (c2: 7.30 [p=0.018]) are more likely to have syphilis. In the multivariate analysis, a highest prevalence ratio was observed in women with income less than 2 minimal wages (PR: 0.96 [95% CI: 0.85 - 0.97]), and who did not have high school (PR: 0.94 [95% CI: 0.90 - 0.98]). In addition, 80% of the women reported irregular use of condoms and 63.89% declared having sexual intercourses with multiple partners, which creates more opportunities for the transmission of the infection. These results highlight the need for healthcare systems to implement initiatives to monitor syphilis screening and the commitment of patients and their sexual partners to the treatment in order to achieve a decrease of new cases.

Satellyptus: analysis and database of microsatellites from ESTs of Eucalyptus

The main goal of our research was to search for SSRs in the Eucalyptus EST FORESTs database (using a software for mining SSR-motifs). With this objective, we created a database for cataloging Eucalyptus EST-derived SSRs, and developed a bioinformatics tool, named Satellyptus, for finding and analyzing microsatellites in the Eucalyptus EST database. The search for microsatellites in the FORESTs database containing 71,115 Eucalyptus EST sequences (52.09 Mb) revealed 20,530 SSRs in 15,621 ESTs. The SSR abundance detected on the Eucalyptus ESTs database (29% or one microsatellite every four sequences) is considered very high for plants. Amongst the categories of SSR motifs, the dimeric (37%) and trimeric ones (33%) predominated. The AG/CT motif was the most frequent (35.15%) followed by the trimeric CCG/CGG (12.81%). From a random sample of 1,217 sequences, 343 microsatellites in 265 SSR-containing sequences were identified. Approximately 48% of these ESTs containing microsatellites were homologous to proteins with known biological function. Most of the microsatellites detected in Eucalyptus ESTs were positioned at either the 5 or 3 end. Our next priority involves the design of flanking primers for codominant SSR loci, which could lead to the development of a set of microsatellite-based markers suitable for marker-assisted Eucalyptus breeding programs