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Background: Human transmission of Chagas disease (CD) most commonly occurs in domiciliary spaces where triatomines remain hidden to feed on blood sources during inhabitants’ sleep. Similar to other neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), sustainable control of CD requires attention to the structural conditions of life of populations at risk, in this case, the conditions of their living environments. Considering socio-cultural and political dynamics involved in dwellings’ construction, this study aimed to explore social factors that contribute or limit sustainability of CD’s prevention models focused on home improvement. Methods and main findings: Using Healthy Homes for Healthy Living (HHHL)—a health promotion strategy focused on improvement of living environments and system-based health promotion—as a reference, a qualitative study was conducted. Research participants were selected from three rural communities of a CD endemic region in southern Ecuador involved in HHHL’s refurbishment and reconstruction interventions between 2013 and 2016. Folowing an ethnographic approach, data were collected through interviews, participant observation, informal conversations and document analysis. Our results indicate that the HHHL model addressed risk factors for CD at the household level, while simultaneously promoting wellbeing at emotional, economic and social levels in local communities. We argue that sustainability of the CD prevention model proposed by HHHL is enhanced by the confluence of three factors: systemic improvement of families’ quality of life, perceived usefulness of control measures, and flexibility to adapt to emerging dynamics of the context. Conclusion: HHHL’s proposed home improvement, facilitated through system-based rather than disease specific health promotion processes, enhances agency in populations at risk and facilitates community partnerships forged around CD prevention. Although an independent analysis of cost-effectiveness is recommended, structural poverty experienced by local families is still the most important factor to consider when evaluating the sustainability and scalability of this model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The auditory system of the cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus, demonstrates an unusual amount of anatomical plasticity in response to injury, even in adults. Unilateral removal of the ear causes deafferented auditory neurons in the prothoracic ganglion to sprout dendrites across the midline, a boundary they typically respect, and become synaptically connected to the auditory afferents of the contralateral ear. The molecular basis of this sprouting and novel synaptogenesis in the adult is not understood. We hypothesize that well-conserved developmental guidance cues may recapitulate their guidance functions in the adult in order to facilitate this compensatory growth. As a first step in testing this hypothesis, we have generated a de novo assembly of a prothoracic ganglion transcriptome derived from control and deafferented adult individuals. We have mined this transcriptome for orthologues of guidance molecules from four well-conserved signaling families: Slit, Netrin, Ephrin, and Semaphorin. Here we report that transcripts encoding putative orthologues of most of the candidate developmental ligands and receptors from these signaling families were present in the assembly, indicating expression in the adult G. bimaculatus prothoracic ganglion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of a new malaria protocol introduced in 2007 at Nyarugusu Refugee Camp. In accordance with this protocol, the delivery of a diagnostic test (rapid diagnostic test or microscopy) was made compulsory prior to the administration of antimalarial drugs (ACTs: artemisinin-based combination therapies). We collected camp clinic records on outpatient malaria diagnoses from 2004 through 2007 and compared the morbidity percentages attributed to malaria during these years, as well as the actual incidence of malaria in 2006 and 2007. Our analyses demonstrate that malaria accounted for 45.8% of all morbidity in 2004 (64,557 malaria cases out of 1,40,669 total morbidity), followed by corresponding figures of 47.8% for 2005 (94,389 malaria cases out of 1,97,400) and 47.9% for 2006 (60,760 malaria cases out of 1,26,754); however, the values dropped sharply to 22.8% in 2007 (20,136 malaria cases out of 88,254). We found a similar drastic drop in the incidence of malaria from an average of 182.415 cases/1000 inhabitants/month in 2006 to only 35.635 cases/1000 inhabitants/month in 2007. The results of our study suggest that because of the overlap of symptoms from malarial and non-malarial febrile illnesses, diagnosing malaria on clinical and epidemiological bases may lead to its overdiagnosis. This could result in both the overprescription of antimalarials and the underdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment of non-malarial febrile processes. The use of affordable and available tests can increase the accuracy of malaria diagnoses, so that only real malaria cases would be treated as such. This would help curb the uncontrolled administration of antimalarials to prevent the development of resistance to new malarial treatments and thus decrease treatment expenses. This way, financial, material and human resources can be allocated to other health issues that currently go unnoticed.