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Abstract Background The impact of the pandemic caused by the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), causing the disease COVID-19, has brought losses to the world in terms of deaths, economic and health problems. The expected return of the public to activities adapted to the new health situation led to discussions about the use of vaccination and its effects. However, the demand for proof of vaccination showed how inconsistent, unregistered, and uncontrolled this health process is with current technologies. Despite the proven effectiveness of vaccines in reducing infection rates, mortality, and morbidity, there are still doubts about their use in preventing certain infections and injuries, as well as the use of digital medical records for identification at public events and disease prevention. Therefore, this review aims to analyze the use of digital immunization cards in disease prevention in general. Methods A systematic review of Science, PubMed/MEDLINE, LILACS /BSV, CINALH, and IEEE and Xplore was performed using PRISMA guidelines. The authors summarized the studies conducted over the last decade on the impacts of prophylaxis by control through immunization cards. Studies were selected using the following terms: Vaccination; Mobile Applications; Health Smarts Cards; Immunization Programs; Vaccination Coverage. For data analysis, we used Mendeley, Excel, RStudio, and Bibliometrix software among others. Results A total of 1828 publications were found. After applying eligibility criteria (Articles published in Portuguese, Spanish or English in the last 10 years). Studies that only dealt with paper or physical records were excluded, as well as studies that were not linked to their country’s health Department, as a possibility of bias exists with these types of information). After removing duplicates and applying filters 1 and 2, we included 18 studies in this review. This resulted in 18 papers that met our priori inclusion criteria; it was found that the most relevant sources were from the databases of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Conclusions Considering the selected studies, we found that scientific evidence and epidemiological surveillance are essential tools to characterize the efficiency and effectiveness of immunization passport protection intervention and to ethically justify them. Technological development of digital vaccine passports can assist in vaccination programs and positively impact disease prophylaxis.

Nef proteins from all primate Lentiviruses, including the simian immunodeficiency virus of chimpanzees (SIVcpz), increase viral progeny infectivity. However, the function of Nef involved with the increase in viral infectivity is still not completely understood. Nonetheless, until now, studies investigating the functions of Nef from SIVcpz have been conducted in the context of the HIV-1 proviruses. In an attempt to investigate the role played by Nef during the replication cycle of an SIVcpz, a Nef-defective derivative was obtained from the SIVcpzWTGab2 clone by introducing a frame shift mutation at a unique restriction site within the nef sequence. This nef-deleted clone expresses an N-terminal 74-amino acid truncated peptide of Nef and was named SIVcpz-tNef. We found that the SIVcpz-tNef does not behave as a classic nef-deleted HIV-1 or simian immunodeficiency virus of macaques SIVmac. Markedly, SIVcpz-tNef progeny from both Hek-293T and Molt producer cells were completely non-infectious. Moreover, the loss in infectivity of SIVcpz-tNef correlated with the inhibition of Gag and GagPol processing. A marked accumulation of Gag and very low levels of reverse transcriptase were detected in viral lysates. Furthermore, these observations were reproduced once the tNef peptide was expressed in trans both in SIVcpzΔNef and HIV-1WT expressing cells, demonstrating that the truncated peptide is a dominant negative for viral processing and infectivity for both SIVcpz and HIV-1. We demonstrated that the truncated Nef peptide binds to GagPol outside the protease region and by doing so probably blocks processing of both GagPol and Gag precursors at a very early stage. This study demonstrates for the first time that naturally-occurring Nef peptides can potently block lentiviral processing and infectivity.

Abstract Objective: The aim of this study is to identify the causes for discarding corneas at the Eye Bank of the Federal District in Brasilia, Brazil, and describe the social and demographic variables and Causa Mortis of cornea donors from 2014 to 2017. Methods: We conducted an exploratory and social-epidemiologic descriptive study regarding cornea donation. The data base information was obtained from the corneal donor's medical records analysis. All of the potential donors' records (cause of death, cause of cornea discard, month of donation, age, gender, and time of death, corneal enucleation and preservation), from 2014 to 2017 were included in the study. Results: We looked at 1,574 corneal donor notifications. Demographic characteristics displayed significant differences in gender distribution (male, 74.8% and female, 25.2%), and the average donor age was 40 ± 15.9 years. 25% of the causes of death were from cardiovascular disease followed by 19.6% from sharp or blunt instrument injury, 14.2% resulted from multiple traumas. We described 3,074 donated corneas from the DF Eye Bank, where 2.6% has not been uptaken. Of those 3,074 corneal tissues, nearly 60% (n=1,836) have been transplanted and 40% (n=1,238) were discarded. Regarding the causes of discard, 68% (n=841) were due to positive or indeterminate serological blood tests and 39% (n=486) because of matureness (expired medium guaranteed period of corneal preservation). Conclusions: Specific issues such as violent causes of death, gender disproportion and total time of corneal processing can be better managed to reduce procurement times, and availability, of corneal tissue for transplantation.