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"Los saltamontes son una plaga importante del maíz, uno de sus enemigos naturales son los hongos entomopatógenos (HEP). El manejo adecuado de este cultivo, que involucre cambios en el microhábitat puede contribuir al control de las poblaciones de saltamontes, así como la presencia de sus enemigos naturales. Se evaluó el efecto de dos tipos de manejo agrícola: monocultivo (MC-I) de maíz y policultivo de maíz, calabaza y frijol (PC-I), así como de la vegetación de los márgenes del monocultivo (VMM) y la vegetación de los márgenes del policultivo (VMP), sobre la riqueza y abundancia de saltamontes y sus hongos entomopatógenos (HEP) asociados en Erongarícuaro, Michoacán. Se recolectaron saltamontes mensualmente con una red de golpeo de julio a diciembre de 2015 en dos parcelas de cada tipo de manejo y su vegetación marginal en tres sitios. La comunidad de saltamontes (CS) estuvo conformada por 17 especies, en donde Sphenarium purpurascens purpurascens Charpentier, fue la especie dominante (97.8% de la abundancia). El tipo de manejo agrícola no tuvo efecto sobre la riqueza de especies. La riqueza en la vegetación marginal de los cultivos no explicó la riqueza en el MC-I y PC-I; sin embargo, la abundancia de S. p. purpurascens en la vegetación marginal en los sitios explicó la abundancia encontrada en el MC-I y el PC-I. De 2 920 saltamontes colectados, 0.41% estuvieron infectados por Metarhizium Sorokin o Beauveria (Balsamo) Vuillemin. El HEP con mayor frecuencia de infección fue Metarhizium . La proporción de individuos infectados y las condiciones del PC-I se relacionaron positivamente, en comparación con la VMP. Los sitios con mayor diversidad vegetal tuvieron una mayor abundancia de saltamontes y mayor infección con HEP."

This work was aimed to study the HIV-1 subtype B epidemics in the Basque Country, Spain. 1727HIV-1 subtype B sequences comprising protease and reverse transcriptase (PR/RT) coding regions, sampled between 2001 and 2008, were analyzed. 156 transmission clusters were detected by means of phylogenetic analyses. Most of them comprised less than 4 individuals and, in total, they included 441 patients. Six clusters comprised 10 or more patients and were further analyzed in order to study their origin and diversification. Four clusters included men who had unprotected homosexual sex (MSM), one group was formed by intravenous drug users (IDUs), and another included both IDUs and people infected through unprotected heterosexual sex (HTs). Most of these clusters originated from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. Only one cluster, formed by MSM, originated after 2000. The time between infections was significantly lower in MSM groups than in those containing IDUs (P-value

The immuno-double-diffusion (IDD) test was used to detect antibodies against the prevalent influenza A (H3N2) viruses in sera collected weekly in Madrid from 1972 to 1975. A total of over 14 000 sera were tested. The proportion of sera positive in the IDD test was found to reflect the level of recent influenza A infection of the population. Sí

To describe the prevalence of genotypic resistance mutations, including single and multidrug resistance (MDR) to reverse transcriptase (RT) and protease (PR) inhibitors in treated and untreated patients from two geographical areas in Spain (Madrid and Galicia).Resistance mutations to RT inhibitors were studied by line probe assay (LiPA) or by automated sequencing in 468 patients (Madrid, 268; Galicia, 200), and resistance mutations to PR inhibitors were studied by automated sequencing in 295 patients (Madrid, 85; Galicia, 210).The proportion of resistance mutations in treated and untreated patients results were higher by the LiPA method than by sequencing. By sequencing, we detected resistance mutations to nucleoside analogue RT (NRT) inhibitors and NRT inhibitors plus nonnucleoside RT (NNRT) inhibitors in 35.4% and 17.2% of treated patients, respectively. We also detected MDR to zidovudine plus lamivudine in 13.9% of treated patients from Galicia, in 1.7% from Madrid (p0.001), and in 1.5% of untreated patients from Galicia. Also, we detected MDR to NRT inhibitors in 3.8% and to NNRT inhibitors in 9.1%. We found resistance mutations to PR inhibitors in 38.1% of treated patients and in 0.9% of untreated patients.These findings reinforce the usefulness of testing for resistance mutations in some cases to evaluate their prevalence in a given population and in the follow-up of treated patients.

We attempted to define optimal conditions for amplification of low copy number HIV-1 RNA sequences in plasma samples, applying improved conditions for nucleic acid extraction and amplification.Several methodologic parameters were evaluated, including methods of RNA extraction, volumes of plasma samples, proportion of extracted RNA used as a template for amplification, and reverse transcriptase-DNA polymerase enzyme combination employed in cDNA synthesis and polymerase chain reaction amplification.With this improved assay, we were able to obtain sufficient amounts of amplified material for direct sequencing in 97% of all plasma samples in our study, including 88% of samples with viral loads80 copies/mL, 78% of samples with viral loads50 copies/mL, and even 2 (67%) of 3 samples with20 copies/mL.This procedure could be useful for testing resistance mutations in patients undergoing highly active antiretroviral therapy, in which the viral load is commonly400 copies/mL, and even if it is20 RNA copies/mL.

Multiple viral subpopulations coexist in an HIV infected patient with dynamics of selection established between them. In order to get insight on the phenotype of these subpoblations, and its relation with disease progression, we have studied the biological variability of HIV-1 in 113 patients. Variability was related with CD4+ T lymphocyte counts, clinical status, way of viral transmission and antiretroviral treatment.113 patients (80 adults and 33 children) were studied for HIV-1 isolation in cocultures of infected and non infected lymphocytes. Viral replication was evaluated as rapid (R)/slow (S) or high (H)/low (L). Syncytia formation was estimated in MT2 cell line (SI/NSI). The tropism toward lymphocytes and monocytes (LM) was studied on H9 and U937 cell lines.Up to 86.7% of viral isolates were R, 56.6% were H and 49.6% were SI. These percentages increased with disease progression. Eight viral strains were R/H/NSI cocultivated in MT2 cells and SI in cocultured lymphocytes (NSI/SI), which may be considered as a new phenotype. All the SI isolates and all the R/H (SI and NSI) isolates were LM. Three categories were established: R/H/SI/LM, R/H/NSI/LM and S/L/NSI/NLM. The first two categories corresponded to patients with CD4+ T lymphocytes200 x 10(6)/I (56%, 50%). The third category corresponded to patients with500 x 10(6)/I (53.3%).Viral replication and SI phenotype, independently, are useful markers for severity of HIV infection. The biological differences among NSI of the 3 viral phenotype categories, including the new subgroup NSI/SI, may indicate the existence of more pathogenic NSI subpopulations.