Bioinformatics of the Paracoccidioides brasiliensis EST Project

Paracoccidioides brasiliensis is the etiological agent of paracoccidioidomycosis, an endemic mycosis of Latin America. This fungus presents a dimorphic character; it grows as a mycelium at room temperature, but it is isolated as yeast from infected individuals. It is believed that the transition from mycelium to yeast is important for the infective process. The Functional and Differential Genome of Paracoccidioides brasiliensis Project--PbGenome Project was developed to study the infection process by analyzing expressed sequence tags--ESTs, isolated from both mycelial and yeast forms. The PbGenome Project was executed by a consortium that included 70 researchers (professors and students) from two sequencing laboratories of the midwest region of Brazil; this project produced 25,741 ESTs, 19,718 of which with sufficient quality to be analyzed. We describe the computational procedures used to receive process, analyze these ESTs, and help with their functional annotations; we also detail the services that were used for sequence data exploration. Various programs were compared for filtering and grouping the sequences, and they were adapted to a user-friendly interface. This system made the analysis of the differential transcriptome of P. brasiliensis possible.

Avaliação neurológica de 118 pacientes no primeiro período pós operatório de cirurgia cardiovascular / Neurologic evaluation of 118 patients in the first postoperative period of cardiovascular surgery

118 patients (79 mean and 39 women, mean age of 50.7 years) who underwent cardiovascular surgery and extracorporeal oxygenation were prospectively evaluated for neurologic complication and its correlation with risk factors. 71 were submitted to coronary artery graft by-pass (RM), 18 to valve replacement (TV), 6 to prosthetic valve replacement (RV), 11 to commissurotomy(Co), 5 to thoracic aortic aneurysm correction (An Ao T) and 7 to other surgeries (OT). All of them received extracorporeal oxygenation. No deaths were registered; 14 (11.9%) patients had neurologic abnormalities: delirium in 7 cases, ischemic stroke in 6, epileptic seizure in 3. Patients with systemic arterial hypertension and older patients exhibited a statistically significant (p < 0.05) higher risk of complication. Compared to data of the literature, we had a lower index of morbidity and mortality.

Tremores durante anestesia peridural: influência da temperatura do anestésico local e dos líquidos infundidos / Shivering during epidural anesthesia: influence of local anesthesic and intravenous fluids temperature

Avaliou-se 72 pacientes submetidos a cirurgias ginecológicas a eficácia do aquecimento de soluçöes de expansäo volêmica e do anestésico local, na profilaxia dos tremores durante anestesia peridural. As pacientes foram divididas em quatro grupos: grupo I (controle): anestésico local e líquidos infundidos à temperatura ambiente; grupo II: anestésico local à temperatura ambiente e líquidos infundidos a 37ºC; grupo III: anestésico local a 37º e líquidos infundidos à temperatura ambiente; grupo IV: anestésico local e líquidos infundidos a 37ºC. O aquecimento isolado da soluçäo de anestésico local ou das soluçöes empregadas para expansäo volêmica näo reduziu a incidência de tremores. Entretanto, a utilizaçäo de ambas as soluçöes aquecidas reduziu significativamente a incidência de tremores de 44,5 por cento para 11 por cento (p < 0,05)