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The purpose of the study was to identify the current status of backpack weight in primary schoolchildren in Colima, Mexico, in relation to gender, school grade level, and body mass index. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 240 randomly selected children from 20 primary schools. The participating children's parents signed statements of informed consent. Descriptive statistics, the ?[superscript 2] test, Student's t-test, and Kruskal-Wallis test were used. The mean age was 8.55 ± 2 years (range: 5-12 years). Seventy-eight percent of the schoolchildren presented with a backpack overload that was greater than 10% of their body weight. No significant differences were found in relation to gender. Four out of every five schoolchildren presented with backpack overload, exposing them to a potential health problem. Education and public policy prevention strategies for this situation should be implemented in Mexico and other regions of the world with the same problem.

Bruxism is a jaw muscle activity that involves physio-pathological, psycho-social, hereditary and genetic factors. The purpose of this study was to determine the associations between self-reported bruxism, anxiety, and neuroticism personality trait with the rs6313 polymorphism in the gene HTR2A. A sample of 171 subjects of both sexes (14-53 years of age) was included. The control group (group 1, n=60) exhibited no signs or symptoms of bruxism. The case group had signs and symptoms of bruxism (n=112) and was subdivided into group 2, bruxism during sleep (n=22); group 3, awake bruxism (n=44); and group 4 combined bruxism (n=46). As diagnostic tools, the Self-Reported Bruxism Questionnaire (SBQ), the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised-Abbreviated (EPQR-A) were used. HTR2A (rs6313) SNPs were determined by qPCR for all the participants. The packages SPSS, maxLik and EPI-INFO were used for data analysis. The combined bruxism group reported higher scores in bruxism symptoms, mean = 32.21; anxiety symptoms, mean = 14.80; and neuroticism, mean = 3.26. Combined bruxism was associated with a higher degree of neuroticism (OR=15.0; CI 1.52-148.32) and anxiety in grade 3-moderate (OR=3.56; CI 1.27-10.03), and grade 4-severe (OR=8.40; CI 1.45-48.61), as determined using EPISODE computer software. Genotypic homogeneity analysis revealed no significant differences in allele frequency (P=0.612) among the four groups. The population was in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (maxLik package). In conclusion, the three instruments confirm traits of bruxism, anxiety and neuroticism in individuals with bruxism. These data were ratified when the sample was divided by genotypic homogeneity. On the other hand, there was no significant difference between the groups in the SNPs rs6313 from the HTR2A gene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study was to identify the current status of backpack weight in primary schoolchildren in Colima, Mexico, in relation to gender, school grade level, and body mass index. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 240 randomly selected children from 20 primary schools. The participating children’s parents signed statements of informed consent. Descriptive statistics, the χ2 test, Student’s t-test, and Kruskal–Wallis test were used. The mean age was 8.55 ± 2 years (range: 5–12 years). Seventy-eight percent of the schoolchildren presented with a backpack overload that was greater than 10% of their body weight. No significant differences were found in relation to gender. Four out of every five schoolchildren presented with backpack overload, exposing them to a potential health problem. Education and public policy prevention strategies for this situation should be implemented in Mexico and other regions of the world with the same problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Introduction: worldwide, hospital malnutrition constitutes an important issue of morbidity and mortality. Although the prevalence of malnutrition has been calculated as between 7% and 27% in hospitalized patients, its real prevalence remains unknown or underestimated because of the different criteria for its identification and diagnosis. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of nutritional risk in a cohort of hospitalized patients and to identify the significance of the predictors associated with nutritional risk. Methods: the evaluation of the presence of nutritional risk was carried out in 247 individuals hospitalized at the second-level care institution Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales para los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) Zacatecas, Hospital General Nº 26, in Mexico. Nutritional screening was evaluated during the first 24 hours of stay with the NRS 2002. The weighing of associated variables with nutritional risk was calculated statistically using the software Sigma Plot v11. Results: forty-two percent of patients were at risk of malnutrition. Significant associations between nutritional risk and a reduction in food ingestion (during the last week), the illness severity of the patient, as well as age and sex (p < 0.05), were observed. A reduction in food ingestion during the previous week increased the likelihood of having nutritional risk 6.67 times more (95% CI: 3.4-13.2; p < 0.001) in the studied population. Conclusion: the risk of malnutrition in hospitalized patients at ISSSTE-Zacatecas, Hospital General Nº 26 is frequent (42%). Therefore, early detection of nutritional risk is important to offer for proper nutritional intervention with the objective of decreasing the associated morbidity and mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proclotting enzymes (PCE) are a serine protease-containing CLIP domain and play roles in development of embryonic and innate immune response. Little is known about PCE in mosquitoes, but only three melanization regulatory modules that involve proteases with the CLIP domain have been reported. We cloned the PCE gene and reported the nucleotide sequence encoding a proclotting enzyme in Aedes aegypti L. We did in-silico protein translation, alignment with proclotting proteinase sequences of the other species of different taxonomic orders, and phylogenetic analysis where PCE in Ae. aegypti fit the hypotheses of positive or adaptive evolution. The fundamental information could be applied in strategies for biological control of medically important insects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Introduction: worldwide, hospital malnutrition constitutes an important issue of morbidity and mortality. Although the prevalence of malnutrition has been calculated as between 7% and 27% in hospitalized patients, its real prevalence remains unknown or underestimated because of the different criteria for its identification and diagnosis. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of nutritional risk in a cohort of hospitalized patients and to identify the significance of the predictors associated with nutritional risk. Methods: the evaluation of the presence of nutritional risk was carried out in 247 individuals hospitalized at the second-level care institution Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales para los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) Zacatecas, Hospital General Nº 26, in Mexico. Nutritional screening was evaluated during the first 24 hours of stay with the NRS 2002. The weighing of associated variables with nutritional risk was calculated statistically using the software Sigma Plot v11. Results: forty-two percent of patients were at risk of malnutrition. Significant associations between nutritional risk and a reduction in food ingestion (during the last week), the illness severity of the patient, as well as age and sex (p < 0.05), were observed. A reduction in food ingestion during the previous week increased the likelihood of having nutritional risk 6.67 times more (95% CI: 3.4-13.2; p < 0.001) in the studied population. Conclusion: the risk of malnutrition in hospitalized patients at ISSSTE-Zacatecas, Hospital General Nº 26 is frequent (42%). Therefore, early detection of nutritional risk is important to offer for proper nutritional intervention with the objective of decreasing the associated morbidity and mortality.