ABSTRACT
Background: A high seroprevalence of various transfusion-transmitted infections (TTIs) in donated blood is the main safety concern, especially in low- and middle-income countries. As per the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation, all blood donations must be tested for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), Treponema pallidum infection, and malaria, which mainly comprises the major bulk of TTIs. Aims: The purpose of this study is to observe the seroprevalence of hepatitis C virus and Treponema pallidum infection over the period of 5 years in blood donors of our blood center along with their epidemiological determinants with respect to age, sex, residence, occupation, and type of donors. Materials and Methods: Retrospective study was conducted for the period of 5 years, from 1st January 2017 to December 2021, estimating the seroprevalence of hepatitis C and Treponema pallidum infection in the blood donors along with their epidemiological determinants. Results: Out of 19,689 donations in 5 years, 690 (3.50%) units were positive for transfusion-transmissible infections with 1.67% donors seropositive for HCV, 1.23% for Treponema pallidum infection, 0.42% for HBV, and 0.18% for HIV. The prevalence of TTIs was found to be highest in 2020 (4.52%) and least in 2017 (2.57%). Out of a total of 330 HCV cases detected in 5 years, 84.85% of cases were seen in voluntary donors. Rural donors constituted 71.21% of cases. The majority of cases were seen in the age group of 18-30 years, i.e., 61.82%, and a maximum number of cases were seen in the farmers (31.21%), followed by laborers and construction workers (21.21%). Out of a total of 242 cases of Treponema pallidum infection, 84.29% were seen in voluntary blood donors. Demographic data showed 70.24% of cases in rural donors. Occupational data revealed a maximum number of cases in farmers (34.29%), followed by laborers (21.90%). Conclusion: Higher seroprevalence of HCV and Treponema pallidum infection in our region as compared with other areas is a matter of great concern about the growing infection rate of these in our area. Stringent use of donor selection criteria and more vigorous donor screening is utmost need of the hour for reducing the burden of TTIs in blood transfusion services.
ABSTRACT
Spatio-temporal expression patterns of cytoskeleton-associated profilin (PRF) family proteins in response to varied environmental stimuli are tightly regulated. Functional analyses of PRFs have revealed their crucial roles in varied developmental and stress related traits, but very little is implicit pertaining to cis-acting regulatory elements that regulate such intricate expression patterns. Here, we identified cis-elements with their varying distribution frequencies by scanning 1.5kbp upstream sequences of 5'regulatory regions of PRFs of dicot and monocot plant species. Predicted cis-elements in the regulatory sub-regions of Arabidopsis PRFs (AtPRFs) were predominantly associated with development-responsive motifs (DREs), light responsive elements (LREs), hormonal responsive elements (HREs), core motifs and stress-responsive elements (SREs). Interestingly, DREs, LREs and core promoter motifs, were extensively distributed up to the distal end of 5'regulatory regions on contrary to HREs present closer to the translational start site in Arabidopsis. The evolutionary footprints of predicted orthologous cis-elements were conserved, and preferably located in the proximal regions of 5'regulatory regions of evolutionarily diverged plant species. We also explored comprehensive tissue-specific global gene expression levels of PRFs under diverse hormonal and abiotic stress regimes. In response, the PRFs exhibited large transcriptional biases in a time- and organ-dependent manner. Further, the methodical elucidation of spatial expression analysis of predicted cis-elements binding transcription factors and relevant PRFs showed notable correlation. Results indicate that binding transcription factors' expression data is largely informative for envisaging their precise roles in the spatial regulation of target PRFs. These results highlight the importance of PRFs during plant development; and establish a relationship between their spatial expression patterns and presence of respective regulatory motifs in their promoter sequences. This information could be employed in future studies and field-utilization of cell wall structural genes.
