RESUMO
A series of studies have shown that the heavy burdens of diarrheal diseases in the first 2 formative years of life in children living in urban shanty towns have negative effects on physical and cognitive development lasting into later childhood. We have shown that APOE4 is relatively common in shanty town children living in Brazil (13.4 percent) and suggest that APOE4 has a protective role in cognitive development as well as weight-for-height in children with heavy burdens of diarrhea in early childhood (64/123; 52 percent), despite being a marker for cognitive decline with Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases later in life. APOE2 frequency was higher among children with heaviest diarrhea burdens during the first 2 years of life, as detected by PCR using the restriction fragment length polymorphism method, raising the possibility that ApoE-cholesterol balance might be critical for growth and cognitive development under the stress of heavy diarrhea burdens and when an enriched fat diet is insufficient. These findings provide a potential explanation for the survival advantage in evolution of genes, which might raise cholesterol levels during heavy stress of diarrhea burdens and malnutrition early in life.
Assuntos
Pré-Escolar , Feminino , Humanos , Lactente , Recém-Nascido , Masculino , Apolipoproteínas E/genética , Diarreia Infantil/genética , Polimorfismo Genético/genética , Apolipoproteínas E/metabolismo , Brasil , Desenvolvimento Infantil , Cognição , Estudos de Coortes , Diarreia Infantil/complicações , Diarreia Infantil/metabolismo , Frequência do Gene , Genótipo , Mucosa Bucal/citologia , Reação em Cadeia da Polimerase , Fatores SocioeconômicosRESUMO
Patients with chronic renal disease have an increased incidence of cancer. It is well known that long periods of hemodialysis treatment are linked to DNA damage due to oxidative stress. This genotoxic effect may cause the loss of chromosome fragments, or even entire chromosomes, which form micronuclei after cell division, and can be detected by the micronucleus test. In the present case-control study, we evaluated the genotoxic effect of hemodialysis treatment in 20 patients undergoing hemodialysis, and 20 subjected to peritoneal dialysis, matched for gender and age with 40 controls. Genetic damage was assessed by examining the frequency of micronuclei in 2000 exfoliated buccal cells per individual. Our results revealed that patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment have a significantly higher frequency of micronucleated cells (MNC; 5.60 ± 5.31) compared to control subjects (1.50 ± 2.01, p < 0.01). Interestingly, the same was not observed for the peritoneal dialysis patients who showed no significant differences in MNC (2.85 ± 2.96) frequency compared to control individuals (3.25 ± 3.85). In addition, we evaluated the possible association between creatine levels, smoking, alcohol intake, age, duration of treatment, and incomes of the individuals (separately analyzed according to their gender) and the frequency of micronuclei. The results reported here indicate that the duration of treatment is the only factor associated with increased MNC frequency among hemodialysis patients (Spearman coefficient of 0.414, p = 0.01). The number of MNC found in individuals with six years or less of treatment was significantly lower (2.91 ± 2.74) compared to patients with seven or more years of treatment (8.89 ± 5.96, p < 0.05). Overall, peritoneal dialysis may be a safer choice of treatment, but further studies need to be performed to investigate the risks and benefits of both treatments.