Sera collected in May 1984 from 132 adult residents of Karamoja district, Uganda, were examined by haemagglutination inhibition tests for antibodies against selected arboviruses, namely Chikungunya and Semliki Forest alphaviruses (Togaviridae); dengue type 2, Wesselsbron, West Nile, yellow fever and Zika flaviviruses (Flaviviridae); Bunyamwera, Ilesha and Tahyna bunyaviruses (Bunyaviridae); and...

The chemical and physical properties of haemoglobin S derived from homozygotes for this haemoglobin in Sicily were examined, as well as some erythrocytic characteristics. Sicilian Hb S was identical to that found in USA black patients in electrophoretic mobility on both starch and citrate agar media, solubility, mechanical precipitation rate of oxyhaemoglobins, and minimum gelling concentration...

The role of Toscana (TOS) virus in producing encephalitis without meningitis is uncertain. We studied 2 cases of TOS virus encephalitis without meningitis by means of nested polymerase chain reaction assay and DNA sequencing. Findings confirm that TOS virus may directly cause encephalitis and suggest the usefulness of DNA sequencing in investigating relationships between TOS virus molecular pat...

1Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kuwait, Kuwait. Received: 28/04/02; accepted: 01/12/02 ABSTRACT Diseases caused by dengue, sandfly fever and hanta viruses pose a major health risk in many countries. We determined the threat of these arboviral infections through a serological survey for antibodies using enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) based tests. Hantav...

Most theoretical models of age-related mate choice predict that females should prefer older males because they have proven survival ability. An alternative view is that older males represent inferior mates because of negative genetic correlations between early and late fitness components, or because older males have traded off longevity against other fitness components, have accumulated deleter...

The sandfly Lutzomyia longipalpis (Lutz & Neiva) vectors leishmaniasis in the neotropics. Although much is known about the biology of adult flies, little is known about interactions with its natural enemies. Here, we examined behavior of larvae of L4 L. longipalpis on a soil substrate when exposed to the fire ant Solenopsis invicata (Westwood). When ants were absent, most larvae tended to remai...

We study the impact of organized crime on electoral competition. In a theoretical model where parties compete for mafia support, we show that (i) the strongest party is willing to pay the highest price to secure mafia services; (ii) the volume of electoral trade with the mafia increases with political competition and with the efficiency of the mafia organization. Guided by these theoretical pre...

As a results of the case report "Post-rotavirus vaccine intussusception in identical twins: a case report" recently published on Human Vaccines & Immunotherapy by La Rosa et al., the principal Sicilian Public Health Authorities decided to specify several points and underline some important details omitted by the authors. In particular, aims to underline the remarkable benefit for Sicilian Regio...

Sandflies are widely distributed around the Mediterranean Basin. Therefore, human populations in this area are potentially exposed to sandfly-transmitted diseases, including those caused by phleboviruses. Whilst there are substantial data in countries located in the northern part of the Mediterranean basin, few data are available for North Africa. In this study, a total of 1489 sandflies were c...