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B García

Publications and source records attributed to B García.

94 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

International study of asthma and allergies in childhood. Results of the first phase of the I.S.A.A.C. project in Pamplona, Spain.

The international study of asthma and allergy in childhood was designed for the epidemiological investigation of asthma, by means of a standardized methodology. It was started in 1989, as a consequence of very different results obtained in previous epidemiological studies, of which none could be considered as definitive. First, a standardized survey was performed, in order to determine the prevalence of asthma in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, and subsequently several countries joined them, Spain being one of them. The first objective was to discover the prevalence and severity of bronchial asthma in children who lived in different countries, and to compare the results. Also, it was intended to obtain baseline measurements, in order to assess future trends in asthma prevalence and severity, and to facilitate a base for a subsequent phase of etiologic investigation. For this study, following a protocol previously established, a written survey and a video-survey were given to children aged 13 and 14, and a written survey to the parents of the children aged 6 and 7. All the surveys were performed during the school year 1993-1994. A total of 8,087 surveys were conducted in 53 schools from Pamplona and neighbouring towns. Among the group of children aged 13 and 14, 5.3% had a crisis in the study period, whereas 4.4% suffered from an acute attack. This prevalence was not as high in children aged 6 and 7, for whom the percentages were 3.3% and 3.2%, respectively. We found lower prevalences in the two groups in relation to other countries, and we attribute this result, on one hand to the accessibility to doctors in our area, and on the other hand, to early diagnosis of the disease by specialists, periodic control and suitable etiologic treatment.

Adolescent↗

[Accumulation of actin and adhesion to HEp-2 cells of strains of Escherichia coli isolated from children with diarrhea in Mendoza, Argentina].

E. coli strains are the major bacterial cause of diarrhea among children under 2 years of age residing in Mendoza, Argentina. Detection of diarrheogenic E. coli is made after coproculture, by agglutination tests using O-group antisera including most enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC) serogroups and others often isolated in diarrhea. Although there are many O serogroups and H serotypes of E. coli strongly associated with infantile diarrhea, a number of studies have shown differences in the rate of isolation of EPEC between cases and controls using DNA probes. We compared the diagnosis of EPEC infections by traditional serogrouping tests with other detection methods using cell culture, involving the screening of isolates for adherence patterns to HEp-2 cells. A total of 140 isolates from children less than 24 months old with acute, persistent and chronic diarrhea and 40 isolates from controls were recovered. Three distinct patterns of adherence, termed localised (LA), diffuse (DA) and aggregative (EAgg) adherence were found. The fluorescence actin staining assay was used as indicative of the ability of some EPEC strains that produce attaching-effacing (A/E) lesions. Positive serogrouping strains were strongly associated with adherence (P = 0.0001). LA adherence pattern occurred in 11% of cases with acute diarrhea associated with these serogroups (P = 0.001) and children under 12 months (P = 0.0001). The FAS test was positive in 80% of them. EAgg adherence was found only in patients (20% P = 0.0001) and DA occurred both in cases (29%) and controls (2.5% P = 0.0001). Diagnosis of EPEC infections has traditionally been performed by identifying organisms belonging to a number of serogroups or serotypes epidemiologically linked to diarrhea. Evidence is presented in this paper to show that pathogenicity is not restricted to serogroups. Isolation of many adherent strains not belonging to traditional EPEC O serogroups, shows the need for alternative methods to be used to detect and identify E. coli.

Actins↗