The occurrence of esophagitis and ingluvitis caused by Salmonella Typhimurium in passerines seized from illegal wildlife trafficking is described. This illegal activity causes stress and leads to lowered immunity in the birds. Additionally, inadequate hygiene conditions predispose the birds to diseases such as salmonellosis. Few studies report the occurrence of Salmonella-induced lesions in the esophagus and crop of passerines; therefore, this study aimed to describe the disease in birds of the genus Sporophila, as well as to investigate the presence of the bacterium in the environment and determine the antimicrobial resistance profile of the isolated bacteria. Three birds of the genus Sporophila were necropsied. In the esophagus and crop, yellowish plaques corresponding to necrosis with bacterial aggregates were observed. Salmonella spp. was isolated from these lesions, with genus confirmation via MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Environmental samples were collected from the enclosures and cages where the animals were quarantined, and the same bacterium was isolated. In two birds, the serotype S. Typhimurium was identified. Antibiograms performed on the strains from the birds and the environment revealed resistance to antibiotics in the classes of penicillins, sulfonamides, aminoglycosides, monobactams, tetracyclines, and first and third-generation cephalosporins. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first report of this agent causing death in Sporophila due to esophagitis and ingluvitis. It is also the first report of salmonellosis in three species of passerines in Brazil. The study underscores the importance of understanding the pathogens circulating in wild animals, especially within the context of One Health.

The microRNA-548 (miR-548) family is a large primate-specific microRNA group characterized by extensive sequence diversification, but the relationship between sequence evolution and disease-associated organization remains unclear. We integrated 81 curated mature miR-548 sequences with 134 literature-derived disease-association records and applied sequence alignment, entropy profiling, maximum-likelihood phylogenetics, Jaccard-based disease-profile clustering, network and intersection analyses, and sequence-function matrix correlation. Disease associations spanned 54 curated identifiers across cancer, infectious, inflammatory, and autoimmune categories and were broadly distributed across the phylogeny. After exact mature-sequence matching and collapse of three nomenclature aliases, the primary sequence-resolved analysis included 44 unique mature sequences. Mature-sequence distance showed no significant association with disease-profile distance (Spearman rho = -0.1103, permutation p = 0.1002; 946 pairwise comparisons; 5000 permutations). Restricting the analysis to experimentally supported associations yielded a comparable result (43 sequences; rho = -0.1150, p = 0.1008). These findings indicate that mature-sequence similarity is not a strong predictor of broad disease-association profile similarity within the miR-548 family and support disease-associated convergence across evolutionarily distributed family members.

The protozoan, Leishmania infantum causes visceral leishmaniasis (VL), a neglected tropical disease. In active VL, we observe elevated triglyceride and ver