Long-term commuting times and air quality relationship to COVID-19 in São Paulo

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic is an unprecedented global health crisis and the effects may be related to environmental and socio-economic factors. In São Paulo, Brazil, the first death occurred in March 2020 and since then the numbers have grown to 175 new deaths per day in April 2021, positioning the city as the epicenter of the number of cases and deaths in Brazil. São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world with more than 12 million inhabitants, a fleet of about 8 million vehicles and frequent pollutant concentrations above recommended values. Social inequalities are evident in the municipality, similarly to other cities in the world. This paper focuses on transportation activities related to air pollution and associated with cardiovascular and respiratory diseases especially on people who developed comorbidities during their whole life. This study relates travel trip data to air quality analysis and expanded to COVID-19 disease. This work studied the relationship of deaths in São Paulo due to COVID-19 with demographic density, with family income, with the use of public transport and with atmospheric pollution for the period between March 17th, 2020 and April 29th, 2021. The main results showed that generally passenger kilometers traveled, commuting times and air quality related diseases increase with residential distance from the city center, and thus, with decreasing residential density. PM_2.5 concentrations are positively correlated with COVID-19 deaths, regions with high urban densities have higher numbers of deaths and long-distance frequent trips can contribute to spread of the disease.

Complete genome sequence of a multiple drug resistant Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi CT18

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S. typhi) is the aetiological agent of typhoid fever, a serious invasive bacterial disease of humans with an annual global burden of approximately 16 million cases, leading to 600,000 fatalities. Many S. enterica serovars actively invade the mucosal surface of the intestine but are normally contained in healthy individuals by the local immune defence mechanisms. However, S. typhi has evolved the ability to spread to the deeper tissues of humans, including liver, spleen and bone marrow. Here we have sequenced the 4,809,037-base pair (bp) genome of a S. typhi (CT18) that is resistant to multiple drugs, revealing the presence of hundreds of insertions and deletions compared with the Escherichia coli genome, ranging in size from single genes to large islands. Notably, the genome sequence identifies over two hundred pseudogenes, several corresponding to genes that are known to contribute to virulence in Salmonella typhimurium. This genetic degradation may contribute to the human-restricted host range for S. typhi. CT18 harbours a 218,150-bp multiple-drug-resistance incH1 plasmid (pHCM1), and a 106,516-bp cryptic plasmid (pHCM2), which shows recent common ancestry with a virulence plasmid of Yersinia pestis.

Epidemic typhoid in vietnam: molecular typing of multiple-antibiotic-resistant Salmonella enterica serotype typhi from four outbreaks

Multidrug-resistant Salmonella enterica serotype Typhi isolates from four outbreaks of typhoid fever in southern Vietnam between 1993 and 1997 were compared. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, bacteriophage and plasmid typing, and antibiotic susceptibilities showed that independent outbreaks of multidrug-resistant typhoid fever in southern Vietnam are caused by single bacterial strains. However, different outbreaks do not derive from the clonal expansion of a single multidrug-resistant serotype Typhi strain.

Molecular typing of multiple-antibiotic-resistant Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi from Vietnam: application to acute and relapse cases of typhoid fever

The rate of multiple-antibiotic resistance is increasing among Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi strains in Southeast Asia. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and other typing methods were used to analyze drug-resistant and -susceptible organisms isolated from patients with typhoid fever in several districts in southern Vietnam. Multiple PFGE and phage typing patterns were detected, although individual patients were infected with strains of a single type. The PFGE patterns were stable when the S. enterica serovar Typhi strains were passaged many times in vitro on laboratory medium. Paired S. enterica serovar Typhi isolates recovered from the blood and bone marrow of individual patients exhibited similar PFGE patterns. Typing of S. enterica serovar Typhi isolates from patients with relapses of typhoid indicated that the majority of relapses were caused by the same S. enterica serovar Typhi strain that was isolated during the initial infection. However, some individuals were infected with distinct and presumably newly acquired S. enterica serovar Typhi isolates.