The protozoan parasite Leishmania causes leishmaniasis, a neglected tropical disease, that disproportionately affects underdeveloped countries. This disease has major health, economic, and social implications, particularly because of the limited treatment options, high cost, the severe side effects associated with available therapeutics, and the high rate of treatment failure caused by the parasites’ growing resistance to current medications. In this review, we describe first the common strategies used by pathogens to develop drug resistance and then focus on the arsenal of available drugs to treat leishmaniasis, their modes of action, and the molecular mechanisms contributing to drug resistance in Leishmania spp., including the role of genomic, transcriptional, and translational control. We focus more specifically on our recent discovery of translational reprogramming as a major driver of drug resistance leading to coordinated changes in the translation of transcripts and orchestrating changes in metabolome and lipidome to support drug resistance. A thorough understanding of these mechanisms is essential to identify the key elements needed to combat resistance and improve leishmaniasis treatment methods.

The Orinoco crocodile (Crocodylus intermedius, Graves, 1918) is the most threatened crocodilian of South America. There is only scarce information available about the physiology of this neotropical crocodile. This study aimed to propose baseline hematological and biochemistry reference data and intervals and a morphological description of the peripheral blood cells of captive C. intermedius. Blood was collected from 318 clinically healthy individuals maintained in captivity at Villavicencio, Colombia. Eight of these individuals were sampled and resampled, and these data were compared. Reference intervals were proposed for hematological values [packed cell volume (PCV), red blood cell count, white blood cell count, mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular hemoglobin, mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration, hemoglobin, and white blood cell count differential counts] and biochemistries [total solids, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase, lactate dehydrogenase, creatine kinase, glucose, albumin, cholesterol, uric acid, creatinine, and lactate] including adults and juveniles, males and females' crocodiles. Blood cell morphology for the species is described. Significant differences between sex and age were observed. The intraindividual analysis concluded differences for total solids (P ≤ 0.01) and red blood cell counts (P ≤ 0.01). Some biochemical analytes showed a moderate correlation between them, such as ALT–alkaline phosphatase and ALT–uric acid. We present here novel and baseline data with special importance for the clinical diagnosis, improving the national reintroduction programs from either in situ and ex situ populations.

The Podocnemididae family is seriously affected by anthropogenic factors, which is why almost all of their family members are threatened, according to the IUCN red list. The biology and ecology of these species, as well as the hematological and serum chemistry reference intervals that allow clinical action and decision-making conservation programs, are poorly known. Based on this, the objective of this study was to establish the hematological and blood chemistry parameters of the Savannah side-necked turtle (Podocnemis vogli) and Yellow-spotted river turtle (Podocnemis unifilis) maintained in captivity at the Estación de Biología Tropical Roberto Franco (Villavicencio-Colombia). Forty-nine captive turtles of the speciesP. vogli(n = 28) andP. unifilis(n = 21) were sampled to determine hematological and serum chemistry parameters. Blood samples were taken from the jugular veins of both male and female turtles across both species. Student'st-test and Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon tests were used to compare values between the parameters evaluated against genders and sizes. Reference intervals were calculated for the hematological and biochemical values of each species. Some assessed parameters demonstrated significant differences between the males and females of both species. Most of the analyzed parameters exhibited similar reference intervals in both species. In this study, we report values and propose the hematological and serum chemistry reference intervals forP. vogliandP. unifilis, which can be used in the clinical diagnosis of these reptiles and in future research.

Reptiles show a high occurrence of hemoparasites in the wild; however, little is known about the impact of such infections on their hosts' physiology and health status. Podocnemis vogli is an ancient turtle distributed in South America, frequently infected by blood parasites. Specifically, we analyzed the hematological and serum chemistry parameters of 78 wild turtles. We compared these values with those obtained from non-infected turtles of the same species in ex-situ conditions, considering factors such as sex and coinfections. Two orders of hemoparasites were detected under microscopic analyses: Adelorina, represented by Haemogregarina sp. (98.72 ± 0.28%), and Haemosporida, represented by Haemocystidium sp. (30.77 ± 1.16%), the latter genus being always in coinfection with Haemogregarina. Significant differences were observed in 20 parameters between infected (free living) and uninfected (living in captivity) turtles. The ALP, PCV, Hb, and MCV were significantly different by sex; albumin, cholesterol, creatinine, percentage of heterophils, lymphocytes, and basophils differed in coinfection. This is the first report of reference intervals of P. vogli in the wild and the first study comparing hematological and blood biochemistry values between hemoparasite-infected and uninfected P. vogli turtles. However, the limited knowledge of these parameters in wild reptiles and the wide range of interval values makes it difficult to determine any significant impact on turtle health. Nevertheless, this study highlights the need for more in-depth research to explore the potential effects of blood parasite infections on turtles, including immune response and coevolution studies.

Informatics tools have enabled the detection of various types of misconduct regarding research studies in scientific literature. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) (ORI), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Retraction Watch and countries’ academies of science sponsor courses, seminars and research to promote values such as honesty, impartiality, objectivity, reliability, responsibility and skepticism in scientific communication. We analyzed here 1,373 articles recorded in PubMed from 1959 to 2015 with open access to their text and retraction notes. We observed that articles retracted from 2010 to 2015 almost duplicated those accumulated during the previous 44 years; in 32.8% of them retraction was due to admitted error; 23.7% to plagiarism or self-plagiarism, and 19.7% to data falsification or fabrication. Thirty-seven articles were retracted during the first four months of 2015 due to false review or author influence on reviewers, which represents a research misconduct not detected in previous studies. The percentages of open access retracted articles published per year varied from 0.0072% (1/13,861) in 1966 to 0.0472% (213/451,021) in 2013. The percentage of articles retracted compared to articles published from 54 countries throughout the world during the same period (1959-2015) varied from 0.0042% (1/23,761) to 0.2732% (1/366). The amount of articles retracted signed by more than 10 authors was lower than that for 6 to10 or 1 to 5 authors. We found that 794 (57.8%) articles were retracted before the first two years and 579 (42.2%) more than two years after their publication. The retraction of 714 (52%) of the articles was requested by the authors, of 485 (35.3%), by the editors, and of 70 (5.1%) by mutual agreement; 80.8% (1,110/1,373) of the retracted articles had been cited. We discuss here the importance of promotion, education, retraction and correction of scientific literature as a contribution to scientific integrity and society’s confidence in the scientific community. © 2016. Acad. Colomb. Cienc. Ex. Fis. Nat. All rights reserved.

Objetivo. Evaluar diferentes puntos de venopunción y el uso de dos anticoagulantes para la obtención de muestras sanguíneas en tortugas. Materiales y métodos. Se muestrearon 82 individuos de las especies Trachemys callirostris, Podocnemis unifilis y Chelonoidis carbonaria. Los puntos de venopunción evaluados fueron: seno venoso subcaparacial, vena coccígea dorsal y vena yugular; y se compararon dos anticoagulantes: heparina de sodio y EDTA. Resultados. A partir de la vena yugular se obtuvieron muestras sanguíneas sin hemodilución y en un volumen suficiente para realizar análisis hematológicos. Por el contrario, a partir de los otros sitios de venopunción se obtuvieron mayoritariamente muestras hemodiluidas. Las muestras de sangre obtenidas a partir de C. carbonaria se hemolizaron tras su almacenamiento en EDTA (40 µl/ml de sangre), lo que no se evidenció al utilizar heparina de sodio (100 UI/ml de sangre) como anticoagulante. Conclusiones. La vena yugular es el sitio de venopunción más recomendable para la extracción de muestras sanguíneas con fines clínicos. La heparina de sodio fue el anticoagulante de elección para almacenar dichas muestras al no inducir hemólisis en estas.