Maternal brucellosis and human pregnancy.

Brucellosis is a worldwide zoonotic gram-negative bacterium of worldwide distribution. Its role in causing miscarriage in animals is well documented. Data on its role in human abortion are very few. This paper was carried out on selected women with abortion or history of abortion to clarify the role of brucellosis in human abortion. A total of 129 women were selected from Al-Zahraa University Hospital and other obstetric and gynecological hospitals in the vicinity of Greater Cairo. The patients were subjected to clinical, gynecological, and serodiagnosis (STAT and ELISA) of brucellosis. Also, routine urine (Nuclepore technique) and stool (Kato thick smear) was done as well as skin tests and ELISA for common hepatic parasites. The results showed that 59 had brucellosis, 27 had toxoplasmosis, 15 had fascioliasis and 29 had other cause(s) of abortion. Meanwhile, none had visceral leishmaniasis or schistosomiasis mansoni. the signs and symptoms of all patients were hepatosplenomegaly (31.1%), lower back abdominal pain (23.13%), lassitude, headache (each, 21.7%), lymphadenopathy (20.1%), vomiting (17.1%), loss of appetite, myalgia or diarrhea or constipation (each, 15.42 %), weight loss (14.6%), chest pain (13.9%), night sweating or dizziness (11.65%), fever or right sided abdominal pain (each, 10.7%), chills (7.71%), urticaria or monoarthralgia (each, 3.85%). These signs and symptoms were confusing for specific clinical picture of brucellosis. Brucellosis patients were successfully treated with a combination of Rifampicin 600 mg. once daily and Septrin 800 mg twice daily for 6 weeks. Cure was achieved clinically and serologically. Patients with toxoplasmosis or fascioliasis were also treated with Fasinex and Mirazid respectively. Other parasites were also treated.

Phylogenetic evidence for recombination in SAG5 locus in Toxoplasma gondii.

The present study evaluated the hypothesis that genetic diversity in SAG5 genes was generated by recombination events. Three lines of evidence suggested that recombination occurred in SAG5 genes in T. gondii. The permutation test revealed strong signature of intragenic recombination, pairwise comparisons of nucleotide sequences of SAG5 genes revealed that SAG5A alleles have chimerical structures composed of segments derived through recombination events between different alleles, and phylogenetic trees reconstructed based on SAG5 sequences using neighbor-joining and maximum parsimony methods, showed statistically well-supported consensus clusters of T. gondii strains specific to each SAG5 gene. Topological discrepancies between trees based on the N-terminal variable domain and C-terminal conserved domain sequences, were observed, suggesting intragenic recombinetion between SAG5A and SAG5B/C genes. The results showed that recombination within SAG5 in T. gondii was a major evolutionary mechanism generating both allelic variation at SAG5 locus and contributing to genotypic diversity and to emergence of new T. gondii variants, allowing them to evade the host immune defence mechanism.