Over 1 billion people globally are estimated to be infected with Toxoplasma gondii with severe or unknown consequences and no safe and effective therapies are available against congenital or persistent chronic infection. We propose that atovaquone and diclazuril synergistically protect against fetal-maternal toxoplasmosis. METHODS Programmed pregnant mice were treated with atovaquone and dicl...

In this paper, optimal design of arch dams is performed under frequency limitations. Colliding Bodies Optimization (CBO), a recently developed meta-heuristic optimization method, which has been successfully applied to several structural problems, is revised and utilized for finding the best feasible shape of arch dams. The formulation of CBO is derived from one-dimensional collisions between bo...

Haloperidol treatment during pre- and post-natal period affects maternal behavior and this may have long-term effects on the offspring. We examined whether early haloperidol administration to Wistar-Albino-Glaxo dams from Rijswijk (WAG/Rij) and in Wistar control rats would affect maternal care and as a consequence, seizure susceptibility and behavior in the WAG/Rij's offspring at 3-4 months of ...

Groups of up to 13 pregnant rats were individually caged. Body weight, food and water consumption were recorded at days 1, 8, 15 and 22 of gestation and the dams were treated on days 8-15 with sodium chlorite, 0.1%, 0.5% or 2% in drinking water or by injection of 10, 20, or 50 mg/kg IP or by gavaging with 200 mg/kg. To prevent ingestion of stillborn pups some dams were sacrificed at day 22. Oth...

We hypothesized that treatment of pregnant rat dams with a dual reactive monoclonal antibody (mAb4G9) against (+)-methamphetamine [METH; equilibrium dissociation rate constant (KD) = 16 nM] and (+)-amphetamine (AMP; KD = 102 nM) could confer maternal and fetal protection from brain accumulation of both drugs of abuse. To test this hypothesis, pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats (on gestational day 21)...

Obesity and type 2 diabetes are growing problems worldwide in adults and children. In this study, we focused on understanding the patterning of insulin resistance as a result of altered perinatal nutrition. We analyzed mice in which the binding site for PPARgamma was deleted from the promoter of the cytosolic phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase gene (Pck1) (PPARE(-/-)). We analyzed pups from dams...

Developing countries around the world are expanding hydropower to meet growing energy demand. In the Brazilian Amazon, >200 dams are planned over the next 30 years, and questions about the impacts of current and future hydropower in this globally important watershed remain unanswered. In this context, we applied a hydrologic indicator method to quantify how existing Amazon dams have altered the...

Andes-to-Amazon river connectivity controls numerous natural and human systems in the greater Amazon. However, it is being rapidly altered by a wave of new hydropower development, the impacts of which have been previously underestimated. We document 142 dams existing or under construction and 160 proposed dams for rivers draining the Andean headwaters of the Amazon. Existing dams have fragmente...

BACKGROUND MTHFD1 encodes C1-tetrahydrofolate synthase, which is a folate-dependent enzyme that catalyzes the formation and interconversion of folate-activated one-carbon groups for nucleotide biosynthesis and cellular methylation. A polymorphism in MTHFD1 (1958G→A) impairs enzymatic activity and is associated with increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, but the mechanisms are unknown. ...

Increasing evidence from human epidemiological studies suggests that poor growth before birth is associated with postnatal growth retardation and the development of cardiovascular disease in adulthood. We have shown previously that nutritional deprivation in the pregnant rat leads to intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR), postnatal growth failure, changes in the endocrine parameters of the som...