Cattle farming is a major livestock activity with economic relevance in Rio Grande do Sul (RS), Brazil. However, this activity is still considered of intermediate to low technological level, and in this region, there are few epidemiologic reports of Campylobacter fetus subsp. venerealis (Cfv), the causative agent of bovine genital campylobacteriosis (BGC). Thus, we designed a cross-sectional study to assess the prevalence and Cfv-associated factors in cattle farms in RS, Brazil. In total, 99 farms were randomly selected to participate in the survey. Preputial mucus samples from selected bulls were collected twice (within a 15-day interval) and subjected to Cfv molecular detection. A farm was considered positive when at least one sample was positive for Cfv. Our findings indicate that the farm-level Cfv prevalence in RS is 67.67%. On average, the chance of a farm using natural service to be Cfv-positive increased approximately twice compared to farms that do not use natural service. We also determined that Cfv routine tests reduce the chance of a farm being positive by 92%. Therefore, both Cfv detection tests and the reduction of natural services decrease the chance of a farm being positive for Cfv. Finally, we conclude that Cfv is widely spread in Southern Brazil cattle farms and it is urgent the implementation of control measures to reduce Cfv prevalence in the target population.

Reproduction is essential for successful cow-calf and dairy production and the most important economic trait for cow-calf producers. For efficient reproduction to occur in beef herds, cows or heifers must conceive early during the breeding season, maintain the pregnancy, calve unassisted or with very little assistance, rebred in a timely manner and wean a calf every year. In the case of dairy cattle, cows or heifers are expected to become pregnant, maintain the pregnancy, and calve every 12 to 15 months to produce milk. Interruption of that process leads to delay or total loss of production. Although fertile bulls are required to achieve reproduction, they come with potential risk of transmitting disease during breeding.

UNASSIGNED: The skin and mucosa of the vulva are different from the rest of the human body, as it is derived from all three embryological layers. It is more prone to dermatological diseases, both infectious and noninfectious.
UNASSIGNED: Our study was a prospective descriptive study on female patients attending the skin outpatient department with complaints of vulval dermatoses. Our aim was to determine the prevalence of venereal and nonvenereal dermatoses (infectious and non-infectious) along with age-wise distribution of these in our area.
UNASSIGNED: All female patients presenting with visible skin lesions on the vulva from January 2019 to December 2019 were included in this study. Various diagnostic tests such as Gram staining, Tzanck smear, KOH mount, herpes simplex virus serology, and skin biopsy were performed wherever necessary.
UNASSIGNED: The study included 520 patients in whom 525 lesions were identified. These were grouped under venereal and non-venereal dermatoses. Nonvenereal dermatoses were further grouped under infectious and non-infectious conditions. Maximum patients were in the age group of 21-40 years (50.19%). The most common dermatoses were non-venereal infections, seen in 220 (42.30%) patients followed by non-venereal, non-infectious dermatoses seen in 177 (34.04%) patients whereas venereal dermatoses were seen in 128 (24.61%) patients.
UNASSIGNED: Most of the patients were in the reproductive age group, and the prevalence of infectious dermatoses both venereal and non-venereal was much more than that of non-infectious conditions affecting the vulval skin as per our study.

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) represent a major cause of morbidity in women and men worldwide. The main aim of this study was to perform a comparative analysis of the incidence of sexually transmitted viral infections in 2010-2015 in Poland, taking into account the administrative division of the country into provinces. This was a retrospective study. The analysed data came from the Centre for Health Information Systems of the Ministry of Health and the National Institute of Public Health-National Research Institute and constituted information from the epidemiological surveillance system in Poland. We collected data on the incidence of the following diseases: genital herpes (HSV), genital warts, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). The key groups with the highest risk of infection were young people between 20 and 29 years of age. The reported data on the incidence of genital herpes in Poland (n = 3378; 1.5/100,000) showed a downward trend, which does not coincide with global trends. Genital warts were the most frequent genital infections in Poland (n = 7980; 3.46/100,000), with significant regional variation. Over the analysed period, the situation of newly detected HIV infections seemed to be stable (n = 7144; 3.1/100,000). The incidence of these infections appeared to be highly correlated with urbanisation rates, which was not confirmed in the case of other analysed infections. The worsening epidemic situation with respect to sexually transmitted infections, the inefficiency of the current surveillance system and the reduction in funding for diagnosis and prevention, combined with inadequate legal solutions, make it necessary to undertake new legal and organisational measures aimed at improving the reproductive health in Poland in terms of sexually transmitted infections.

Sexually transmitted infections are common infectious diseases. The main aim of this study was to perform a comparative analysis of the incidence of bacterial sexually transmitted infections in 2010-2015 in Poland, taking into account the administrative division of the country into provinces. This was a retrospective study. The analysed data came from the Centre for Health Information Systems of the Ministry of Health and constituted information being the epidemiological surveillance system in Poland. The analysis included data on the incidence of primary and secondary syphilis, gonorrhoea and non-gonococcal urethritis and genital infections. The overall incidence rates were disproportionately lower than European rates and those presented in studies from other countries. Young people, between 20 and 29 years of age, were the key groups at the highest risk of infection. The incidence rate of primary and secondary syphilis was lower in Poland than in Europe or America, but some regions, such as Mazovia and Lodz provinces, were found to have a higher incidence rate than other European rates. The reported incidence of gonorrhoea in Poland was also significantly lower compared with other countries, with a significantly higher number of infections in males than in females, and this was also one of the highest rates in EU countries. During the study period, the number of non-gonococcal genital infections systematically decreased, while in other countries of the European region, the incidence was among the highest of all sexually transmitted infections.

Recent scholarship on the social history of health and medicine in colonial India has moved beyond enclavist or hegemonic aspects of imperial medicine and has rather focused on the role of Indian intermediaries and the fractured nature of colonial hegemony. Drawing inspiration from this scholarship, the article highlights the significance of the Indian subordinates in the lock hospital system in the nineteenth century Madras Presidency. This study focuses on a class of Indian subordinates called the \"gomastah\", who were employed to detect clandestine prostitution in Madras to control the spread of venereal disease. It also underlines the role of other native and non-native subordinates such as Dhais, Chowdranies and Matrons, the ways in which they became indispensable for the smoother operation of the Contagious Diseases Act and the lock hospitals on a day-to-day basis. By emphasising how Indian subordinates were able to bring in caste biases within colonial governmentality, adding another layer to the colonial prejudices and xenophobia against the native population, it underlines the fact that there was not a one-way appropriation or facilitation of the coloniser\'s knowledge or biases by the colonised intermediaries. Rather, it argues for an interaction between them, and highlights the complexities of caste hierarchies and prejudice within the everyday colonial governmentality. Moreover, the article focuses on the consequent chaos and inherent power struggle between different factions of colonial staff.
Die jüngere Forschung zur Sozialgeschichte der Gesundheit und Medizin im kolonialen Indien hat sich jenseits spezifischer hegemonialer Aspekte der imperialen Medizin mittlerweile verstärkt der Bedeutung ihrer indischen Vermittler und der gebrochenen Natur kolonialer Herrschaft zugewandt. Davon inspiriert beleuchtet der Beitrag die Rolle indischer Subalterner im System der Krankenhäuser für Geschlechtskrankheiten der Provinz Madras im 19. Jahrhundert. Er fokussiert auf die so genannten „Gomastah“, eine Klasse von indischen Untergebenen, die zur Aufdeckung der illegalen Prostitution in Madras eingesetzt wurden, um so die Ausbreitung von Geschlechtskrankheiten zu verhindern. Untersucht wird auch die Rolle anderer einheimischer und nicht einheimischer Untergebener wie der Dhais, Chowdranies und Matrons, die für die reibungslose Umsetzung des Contagious Diseases Act und das alltägliche Funktionieren dieser Krankenhäuser unverzichtbar waren. Indem herausgearbeitet wird, wie indisches Kastendenken in die koloniale Gouvernementalität einfließen konnte und so koloniale Vorurteile und Xenophobie stärkte, unterstreicht der Artikel die Tatsache, dass es keine einseitige Aneignung oder Vermittlung kolonialen Wissens und kolonialer Vorannahmen durch die kolonisierten Vermittler gab. Argumentiert wird vielmehr für deren Interaktion, betont wird die komplexe Bedeutung des Kastensystems und seiner Vorurteile für das alltägliche koloniale Regierungshandeln. Zudem befasst sich der Beitrag mit dem daraus resultierenden Chaos und den inhärenten Machtkämpfen zwischen verschiedenen Gruppierungen des kolonialen Personals.

Poor reproductive performance in beef cattle caused by infectious agents results in major financial losses as a result of reduced pregnancy rates and extended calving intervals. Bulls can be subclinical chronic carriers of bacterial and protozoal agents involved in cow infertility, such as Campylobacter fetus subsp. venerealis, Ureaplasma diversum, Mycoplasma bovigenitalium, Mycoplasma bovis, and Tritrichomonas foetus. Bulls harbor these microorganisms in their preputial crypts and transmit the agents to cows during natural mating. To obtain an overview of the etiologic agents in the preputial mucus of bulls, we aimed to identify, by PCR assay, C. fetus subsp. venerealis, M. bovis, U. diversum, M. bovigenitalium, and T. foetus in Brazilian bulls from farms with high infertility rates. We collected preputial mucus from 210 bulls on 18 beef cattle farms in Brazil between 2019 and 2020. We found at least one of the infectious agents that we were studying in bulls on 16 of the 18 beef cattle farms tested. We detected at least one infectious agent from 159 of 210 (76%) bulls tested, namely C. fetus subsp. venerealis, M. bovis, U. diversum, M. bovigenitalium, and T. foetus in 87 (55%), 84 (53%), 45 (28%), 28 (18%), and 1 (0.6%) animal, respectively. We found 95 bulls (60%) positive for only 1 etiologic agent (single infection) and 64 bulls (40%) carried multiple agents. Our results demonstrate the occurrence of bacterial and protozoal infectious agents that may be related to infertility in Brazilian beef cattle herds.

Leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease of importance to public health and in livestock productions. It causes significant economic losses in pig breeding farms worldwide. However, actual transmission cycles and disease epidemiology in the pig population remain largely unknown. Despite the fact that the potential risk of venereal transmission of pathogenic Leptospira serovars in pigs has been a topic of discussion since the 1970s, reliable data are still lacking compared to other livestock species. Consequently, antibiotics are added to semen extenders to reduce bacterial contamination including pathogens like Leptospira. In view of the global threat of antimicrobial resistances, the routine use of antibiotics in porcine semen extenders is now under debate. Information about the prevalence of Leptospira infections in boar used for artificial insemination is needed for the development of novel antimicrobial concepts in pig insemination.This short report provides a summary of the state of knowledge, together with negative results from real-time PCR analyses for the detection of pathogenic Leptospira DNA in boar semen. Molecular analyses were performed on 96 raw and extended samples obtained from normospermic ejaculates of 58 boar housed in six different studs in Germany. In the absence of reliable data, it is important to raise the awareness for a subject that can represent a challenge for pig productions in keeping reproductive health and food safety at high levels. The present molecular results indicate that Leptospira might not be a common threat in boar semen. Conclusive evidence would require results from a systematic serological surveillance of boar, combined with seasonal molecular analyses of semen to identify potential carriers, and assess actual seroprevalences, associated Leptospira serovars and transmission events.

Antimicrobial resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae (GC) has made gonorrhoea control and treatment more complex globally. In Greenland, the incidence of gonorrhoea is high and there is a need for continued surveillance of antimicrobial susceptibility.This study investigated gonococcal isolates obtained in Greenland\'s capital Nuuk between January 2015 and June 2018. Subsequent to collection, isolates were tested for ciprofloxacin and ceftriaxone susceptibility in order to monitor the resistance pattern among GC strains. 150 GC strains were isolated in Nuuk during the observation period (139 males, 93%; 11 females, 7%). All strains were fully susceptible to ceftriaxone. 49% of the GC strains were susceptible to ciprofloxacin. The median minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) for ceftriaxone among GC strains resistant to ciprofloxacin was higher than among GC strains susceptible to ciprofloxacin. No differences in ciprofloxacin susceptibility and median MICs for ceftriaxone were observed by collection year. In conclusion no ceftriaxone resistance has been found in Nuuk to date. Continued easy access to diagnostics and treatment combined with increased and more systematic surveillance of antimicrobial susceptibility in Nuuk is recommended. Further, it is advisable to investigate the possibilities for intermittent sampling in Greenland outside of Nuuk, if obstacles in relation to sending sampling material to Nuuk can be bypassed.

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, ancient humoral pathology was gradually complemented by new concepts of medical theory. Two important theories that emerged in this context were iatrochemistry and iatrophysics. The physician Johannes Franc (1649-1725) from Ulm and Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742), the first professor of the medical faculty of the Fridericiana in Halle (Saale), are representatives of these concepts. In their writings, they conveyed specific instructions for broader therapeutic treatment including various forms of medication. The iatrochemist Franc recorded his therapies in his medical diary. The treatment methods of the iatrophysicist Hoffmann are written down in his twelve-volume Medicina consultatoria. Using the examples of gonorrhea and syphilis, the goal of this paper is to analyze, on the basis of both records, how the two physicians applied the new medical theoretical concepts in the treatment of these diseases. Franc and Hoffmann held the view that these two venereal diseases represent two separate entities. Thus both physicians departed from the traditional theory that gonorrhea was a stage of syphilis. Accordingly, they used different medication therapies for these diseases. Franc and Hoffmann referred to humoral pathological ideas, the discrasia of the humors in expounding the causes of the diseases. The same applies to their basic therapeutic approaches: they implemented humoral pathological concepts in their therapeutic practice. Bloodletting, sweating cures, and water cures as well as strict diets were prescribed. Nevertheless, differences in their treatment methods are clear. Franc consistently supplemented humoral pathology with ideas of iatrochemistry, prescribing treatment of gonorrhea and syphilis with mercury. Hoffmann, on the other hand, explicitly warned against treating gonorrhea with mercury; however, he was not fundamentally opposed to the use of drugs for the treatment of syphilis.
UNASSIGNED: Im ausgehenden 17. und beginnenden 18. Jahrhundert treten an die Seite der antiken Humoralpathologie schrittweise neue medizintheoretische Ansätze. Zwei bedeutende Konzepte sind die Iatrochemie und die Iatrophysik. Der Ulmer Arzt Johannes Franc (1649–1725) und der erste Professor der Medizinischen Fakultät der Fridericiana in Halle (Saale), Friedrich Hoffmann (1660–1742), sind Vertreter dieser Konzepte. Von beiden Ärzten sind Therapieanweisungen, nicht zuletzt mit Arzneimitteln, überliefert. Der Iatrochemiker Franc notierte seine Therapien in seinem medizinischen Tagebuch. Die Behandlungsmethoden des Iatrophysikers Hoffmann sind in seiner zwölfbändigen Medicina consultatoria überliefert. Wie die beiden Ärzte die neuen medizintheoretischen Konzepte anwandten, wird am Beispiel der Gonorrhoe und Syphilis analysiert. Franc und Hoffmann vertreten die Auffassung, dass beide venerischen Erkrankungen zwei getrennte Entitäten sind. Damit überwinden sie die tradierte Vorstellung, wonach die Gonorrhoe ein Stadium der Syphilis sei. Entsprechend setzen beide Ärzte unterschiedliche Arzneimitteltherapien ein. Bei den Krankheitsursachen beziehen sich Franc und Hoffmann auf humoralpathologische Vorstellungen der Dyskrasie. Gleiches gilt für ihre grundsätzlichen Therapieansätze: Sie setzen humoralpathologische Konzepte in ihrer therapeutischen Praxis um. Es werden ebenso Aderlässe, Schwitzkuren und Wasserkuren wie strenge Diäten verordnet. Dennoch sind Unterschiede bei den Behandlungsmethoden deutlich. Franc ergänzt die Humoralpathologie konsequent um Vorstellungen der Iatrochemie, wenn er die Gonorrhoe und Syphilis mit Quecksilber therapiert. Hoffmann hingegen warnt ausdrücklich vor einer Therapie der Gonorrhoe mit Quecksilber, ist aber bei der Therapie der Syphilis nicht grundsätzlich gegen den Einsatz von Arzneimitteln.