Simultaneous quantification of antibiotics in wastewater from pig farms by capillary electrophoresis.

Pig farming is an important activity in the economic development of Mexico with millions of tons of meat produced annually. Antibiotics are used in therapeutic dose to prevent diseases, and sometimes as growth promoters. These compounds are not completely metabolized; they are carried into the environment in its active form at concentrations that could induce antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which could be transferred to human pathogens by horizontal gene transfer. The objective of this work was to develop methods of analysis for simultaneous quantification of the antibiotics Oxytetracycline (OXT), Chlortetracycline (CLT), Enrofloxacin (ENRO) and Ciprofloxacin (CIPRO) by field-amplified sampling injection in capillary zone electrophoresis (FASI-CZE). The method was validated by parameters of (1) linearity, obtaining a lineal range of 0.05 at 1 µg mL-1 for ENRO and CIPRO, and from 0.1 to 1 µg mL-1 for OXT and CLT; (2) precision, obtaining values <5% of standard deviation for CIPRO and ENRO and <10% of standard deviation for OXT and CLT; (3) accuracy, with recovery values from 93 to 115%; (4) selectivity, with values of resolution >2 for the all antibiotics tested. To prove the method, a sample of wastewater from a local pig farm was analyzed, detecting a concentration of 0.140 ±â€¯0.009 for OXT. This concentration was higher than the minimal selective concentration, indicating the point in which resistance to a determined antibiotic could develop. The methods were validated with precision and sensitivity comparable to chromatographic methods, which can be used to analyze wastewater from pig farms directly.

Presymptomatic diagnosis in Huntington's disease: the Mexican experience.

Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant progressive, disabling neurodegenerative disorder, for which there is no effective treatment. Predictive testing (PT) for this illness began in 1986 and by 1993 it became more precise after cloning of the gene and the discovery of a CAG repeat expansion as the underlying cause. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the implementation and results of a PT program in a group of at-risk Mexican individuals with 12 years of follow-up. Our PT program conforms to the guidelines proposed by the International Huntington Association and the HD Working group of the World Federation of Neurology. Seventy-five individuals requested the testing, four of them did not fulfill the inclusion criteria, and five abandoned the program voluntarily before receiving the test results. Therefore, 66 results were delivered to 41 noncarriers and 25 mutation carriers. We did not have any catastrophic event, but 4 individuals with normal results and 11 mutation carriers were depressed. Even if this is a small sample, it is the first report of PT in a Latin-American population in which we have been faced with the same problems referred to in larger series.

Clinical and genetic characteristics of Mexican Huntington's disease patients.

We report the characteristics of 691 Mexican patients with Huntington's disease (HD). These patients, representing 401 families, constitute the largest series of Mexican HD cases as yet described in the literature. We found the clinical characteristics of these patients to be similar to those of other populations, but we observed a higher frequency of infantile cases, a shorter disease duration and a lower suicide rate. In 626 cases, for which molecular analyses were available, CAG-trinucleotide expansion size ranged from 37-106 repeats. The large number of CAG repeats (19.04 +/- 3.02) in normal alleles and the presence of new mutations suggest that the overall prevalence of HD in the Mexican population could be expected to be within range of, or higher than, that reported for Europeans.

El papel del psiquiatra en el diagnóstico predicitivo en la enfermedad de huntington / The part of psychiatra in genetic prediction of Huntington's disease

Acualmente el diagnóstico predictivo de la enfermedad de Huntington (EH) se efectúa por medio de un equipo multidisciplinario. El psiquiatra es importante durante la evaluación de los candidatos que desean que se les realice el diagnóstico predictivo para la EH. Ya que pueden presentarse diversos problemas psiquiátricos por el hecho de saberse en riesgo, y posteriormente al recibir el resultado. La adaptación al resultado sea este positivo o negativo es difícil. Este artículo describe la experiencia psiquiátrica obtenida en nuestra investigación en el Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía de México