Influence of socioeconomic factors on the nutritional status of pupils of 5 to 11 in rural areas in cameroon: Case of the Nyambaka municipality in the Adamawa region.

Malnutrition greatly increases the risk of infant mortality and vulnerability to various diseases later in the long run. It has been shown that children's malnutrition is the result of low household income. Rural areas in Cameroon are mainly made up of poor families. This guided the present research to analyze some socioeconomic factors and their impact on the nutritional status of pupils. Using a simple random sampling technique, 300 pupils were recruited. About 66.33% of pupils were from poor families. Obesity was more prevalent in the category of rich pupils (09.52%) compared to poor (06.53%). The height and weight of pupils studied were lower than the reference (P < 0.001). This study carried out in a single council is proven to be limited for a better understanding of the epidemiology of malnutrition among students, and large-scale studies would be adequate to better prevent and control malnutrition in rural areas.

Killer-Cell Immunoglobulin-Like Receptors (KIR) in HIV-Exposed Infants in Cameroon.

The biological reason(s) behind persistent mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of HIV (albeit at reduced rate compared to the preantiretroviral therapy era) in spite of the successful implementation of advanced control measures in many African countries remains a priority concern to many HIV/AIDS control programs. This may be partly due to differences in host immunogenetic factors in highly polymorphic regions of the human genome such as those encoding the killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptor (KIR) molecules which modulate the activities of natural killer cells. The primary aim of this study was to determine the variants of KIR genes that may have a role to play in MTCT in a cohort of infants born to HIV-infected mothers in Yaoundé, Cameroon. We designed a cross-sectional study to molecularly determine the frequencies of 15 KIR genes in 14 HIV-exposed infected (HEI), 39 HIV-exposed/uninfected (HEU), and 27 HIV-unexposed/uninfected (HUU) infants using the sequence specific primer polymerase chain reaction (PCR-SSP) method. We found that all 15 KIR genes were present in our cohort. The frequency of KIR2DL1 was significantly higher in the unexposed (control) group than in the HIV-exposed group (OR = 0.22, P = 0.006). Stratifying analysis by infection status but focusing only on exposed infants revealed that KIR2DL5, KIR2DS1, and KIR2DS5 were significantly overrepresented among the HIV-exposed/uninfected compared to infected infants (OR = 0.20, P = 0.006). Similarly, the frequencies of KIR2DS1, KIR2DS5, and KIR2DL5 were significantly different between infants perinatally infected with HIV (HIV+ by 6 months of age) and HIV-negative infants. Our study demonstrates that KIR genes may have differential effects with regard to MTCT of HIV-1.