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Introduction: The transparency of data on the value chain of medicines is crucial for the study and monitoring of the pharmaceutical system. These data may impact medicine pricing negotiations, contribute to patient access to pharmaceutical products, and strengthen health systems. Objective: This study analyzed the national strategies to ensure the transparency of data from medicine cost development to marketing in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia. Method: A descriptive study was carried out by searching databases, reports, documents, and scientific articles published between January and August 2022 related to rules on transparency and databases, including 1) marketing authorization; 2) pricing; 3) intellectual property; 4) clinical trials; 5) research and development (R&D); and 6) health technology assessment (HTA) of selected biopharmaceuticals. Results: Transparency data, rules, and information are not uniform. The infostructures (organizational capacity for collecting and distributing information) regarding the pharmaceutical value chain in these three countries face limitations in appropriate measures to publicly share data and evidence, including pre-clinical data, clinical data, and costs. None of the countries require transparency about data on research and development costs. All three countries present similar publicization of data on marketing authorization and intellectual property, with some differences. The significant limitations in Argentina include the absence of formal price regulation and data on the volume of medicine purchased and respective amounts paid. Among the three countries, Brazil showed a higher degree of information transparency, perhaps due to the legal regulation that guarantees citizens access to information of public interest. Brazil also stands out in terms of the public availability of HTA reports and pricing, in addition to the highest volume of information. In contrast, Colombia has in place a decree that allows 5 years of trial data exclusivity for new medicines, an act contrary to data transparency. Despite the different stages of transparency, no country has evidenced a robust use of these data in public policy decision-making. Conclusion: The results reinforce the presence of information asymmetry between stakeholders, data fragmentation, data gaps and overlap, and difficulty in comparing available data across the three countries and the use of these data nationally to produce evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Hortícolas is the property of Revista Colombiana de Ciencias Horticolas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Opinião Jurídica is the property of Revista Opiniao Juridica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Introduction: Social representations are common sense theories about a controversial object, which is constructed consensually by groups. From the point of view of interactional epistemology, social representations are forms of social thought or schemes for interpreting the world directly associated to social practices, that is, to the way groups behave. Objectives: 1) To identify the possible social representation of the 'right' and the 'left' in Colombia. 2) To establish the relationship between the mobilizing effect of the label and the adherence or rejection of postulates of both ideological strands. Method: A questionnaire was applied to 104 Colombian adults, segmented according to their ideological orientation of right, left or center. The questionnaire contained a word-free association technique, from which a prototypical analysis and a similarity analysis were performed; and a Likert scale, based on which an ANOVA test was carried out. Results: A possible social representation of the 'right' structured around former president Álvaro Uribe and two possible representations of the 'left' were identified, one linked to communism and the other to expectations for the consolidation of the peace process. Based on the theory of social identity, it was also possible to show in left voters the mobilizing effect of the label as a trigger of a social representation linked to group identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Minerals, acrylamide, pH, color, and moisture were determined in rapadura. • Rapadura samples showed inter- and intra-country significant differences. • Projection pursuit extracted information on rapadura when PCA failed. • Brazilian and Ecuadorian rapadura showed well-separated clusters. • Rapadura origin can be verified depending on the country under investigation. Rapadura is an artisanal candy obtained from concentrated sugarcane juice. In this study, a differentiation between South American rapadura producers has been tried using a Kurtosis-based projection pursuit analysis (kPPA) concerning essential minerals, acrylamide, moisture contents, pH, and color. These parameters revealed significant inter- and intra-country differences. Based on the employed measurements, a multivariate exploration with kPPA extracted information from rapadura even though it is a very artisanal product and was effective in separating classes, especially Brazilian and Ecuadorian rapadura, where principal component analysis failed. Moreover, ellipse confidence regions showed significant differences between non-organic and organic rapadura from Colombia and Peru in granulated form. From a chemometric point of view, the application of kPPA can be used in cases when other metrics (as based on the variance) fail and can be useful in the exploratory analysis of complex multivariate chemical data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hepatitis delta virus (HDV) is a globally distributed agent, and its genetic variability allows for it to be organized into eight genotypes with different geographic distributions. In South America, genotype 3 (HDV-3) is frequently isolated and responsible for the most severe form of infection. The objective of this study was to evaluate the evolutionary and epidemiological dynamics of HDV-3 over the years and to describe its distribution throughout this continent in an evolutionary perspective. While using Bayesian analysis, with strains being deposited in the Nucleotide database, the most recent common ancestor was dated back to 1964 and phylogenetic analysis indicated that the dispersion may have started in Brazil, spreading to Venezuela and then to Colombia, respectively. Exponential growth in the effective number of infections was observed between the 1950s and 1970s, years after the first report of the presence of HDV on the continent, during the Labrea Black Fever outbreak, which showed that the virus continued to spread, increasing the number of cases decades after the first reports. Subsequently, the analysis showed a decrease in the epidemiological levels of HDV, which was probably due to the implantation of the vaccine against its helper virus, hepatitis B virus, and serological screening methods implemented in the blood banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gastric cancer (GC) stands as the second most common cause of cancer death for males worldwide, and intestinal metaplasia (IM) is a lesion that precedes GC development. In previous works it was shown that polymorphisms of MUC1 gene are associated with increased risk for GC and IM. The aim of the present study was to evaluate MUC1 gene polymorphism in patients with chronic gastritis from Colombia. A Portuguese population of patients with chronic gastritis was used for comparative purposes. A total of 67 Colombian cases and 52 Portuguese cases were analysed by restriction analysis and Southern blotting. MUC1 allele frequencies were significantly different between the two populations, with an overall prevalence of smaller alleles in Colombian samples. Colombian cases showed a lower prevalence of individuals homozygous for small MUC1 mucins in cases without IM (62.5%) when compared with cases with IM (86.0%). The same trend, although not statistically significant, is observed in the Portuguese population. In conclusion, our study shows that Colombian patients with chronic gastritis have a significantly higher prevalence of small MUC1 alleles than the Portuguese population. Our study also shows that small MUC1 genotypes are associated with increased risk for IM development in Colombian patients.

The outcome of Helicobacter pylori infection has been associated with specific virulence-associated bacterial genotypes. The present study aimed to investigate the gastric histopathology in Portuguese and Colombian patients infected with H. pylori and to assess its relationship with bacterial virulence-associated vacA, cagA, and iceA genotypes. A total of 370 patients from Portugal (n = 192) and Colombia (n = 178) were studied. Corpus and antrum biopsy specimens were collected from each individual. Histopathological features were recorded and graded according to the updated Sydney system. H. pylori vacA, cagA, and iceA genes were directly genotyped in the gastric biopsy specimens by polymerase chain reaction and reverse hybridization. Despite the significant differences between the Portuguese and Colombian patient groups, highly similar results were observed with respect to the relation between H. pylori genotypes and histopathology. H. pylori vacA s1, vacA m1, cagA+ genotypes were significantly associated with a higher H. pylori density, higher degrees of lymphocytic and neutrophilic infiltrates, atrophy, the type of intestinal metaplasia, and presence of epithelial damage. The iceA1 genotype was only associated with epithelial damage in Portuguese patients. These findings show that distinct H. pylori genotypes are strongly associated with histopathological findings in the stomach, confirming their relevance for the development of H. pylori-associated gastric pathology.