Reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by neutrophils are crucial for defense against infectious diseases, and the adequate measurement of ROS levels is an important way to evaluate the possibility of infections. The fluorescent probe dihydrorhodamine 123 has been applied exclusively to the measurement of ROS thus far. We developed a novel method for detecting ROS, which utilizes the chemiluminescent probes Luminol and Diogenes. The new method quantitatively detects ROS produced by as few as 10 to 10⁴ neutrophils. Furthermore, this method can detect ROS levels in one microliter of whole blood or ROS produced by Epstein-Barr immortalized B lymphocytes. This method will be valuable for prompt diagnosis of neonatal chronic granulomatous diseases in which neutrophils aberrantly produce superoxide.

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Unprecedented incidences of dengue have been reported in Sri Lanka in recent years. The district of Batticaloa, which was devastated by the 2004 Asian tsunami, is one of the districts affected by dengue. One option to curtail this disease is to implement appropriate vector control measures. A nine-month study was carried out within the Batticaloa Municipal Council limit from April to December 2008. Larval collections were conducted fortnightly using conventional ovitraps for nine months covering the dry and wet seasons. Ovitraps (indoor and outdoor) were placed in 15 randomly selected houses. The collected larvae were brought to the laboratory and reared under laboratory conditions. The larval forms and emerged adults were identified on the basis of reported morphological descriptions. The identified adults of 2–3 d old were exposed to common insecticides following the WHO protocol. During the study period, a total of 10,685 Aedes aegypti and Ae. albopictus mosquitoes were collected, with the former constituting 57% of the total sample. Both species were collected from indoor and outdoor ovitraps, and their prevalence was recorded throughout the study period. A seasonal shift was observed in the density, with Ae. aegypti predominating during the dry season and Ae. albopictus during the wet season. Both species were highly resistant to 4% DDT and susceptible to 0.25% permethrin. The continuous presence of potential dengue vectors may have contributed to the dengue prevalence in the district. Since both species can oviposit in indoor and outdoor ovitraps, public awareness and participation should be promoted in the vector control programme of the Ministry of Health along with continuous vector surveillance.

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In this paper we report two incidents of ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP) that occurred in 2008 on Kakeroma Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. A family consisting of father (42 y.o.), mother (39 y.o.), daughter (11 y.o.) and son (6 y.o.), as well as a friend of the family (male, 78 y.o.) consumed sliced flesh (sashimi) and developed typical symptoms of CPF 4-5 h later: diarrhea, vomiting, and paresthesia of the extremities. Additionally, the two male adults (42 and 78 y.o.) developed mild hypotention (84/48 and 94/40 mmHg, respectively) and bradycardia (36 and 50 bpm, respectively) and were rushed to the ER of the nearest hospital, located on an adjacent island. The implicated fish were caught together off the west coast of the island and were identified as Variola louti and Lutjanus monostigma based on analysis of 16S rRNA gene coded on mtDNA. Remnants of the implicated fish and other fish caught on the same occasion were examined by the official mouse bioassay method (MBA), which defines the minimum amount of CFP toxin needed to kill a male mouse of ddY strain of 20 g body weight within 24 h as one mouse unit (MU). A significantly high toxicity was detected in the V. louti (0.2 MU/g) eaten by the family and the L. monostigma (0.8 MU/g) eaten by the elderly man. Other specimens of Lethrinus nebulosus, Variola albimarginata, Lutjanus gibbus (2 specimens), Aphareus rutilans, and Sphyraena forsteri (2 specimens) were found to be nontoxic (< 0.025 MU/g).
The medical records regarding island inhabitants (ca. 1,500) kept at Kakeroma Tokushukai Clinic, the only medical facility on the Island, and also at Setouchi Tokushukai Hospital, a nearest hospital on an adjacent island (Amami) revealed 6 CFP outbreaks involving 13 cases between 2005 and 2008. The estimated frequency of CFP was 10.0 incidents/10,000 persons/year and the morbidity rate was 21.7 cases/10,000 persons/year. The symptoms and signs observed in the patients and the implicated fish species, L. monostigma and V. louti, were typical of CFP in this region.

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The milestones marking substantial changes in the lives or in the survival of humans deserve to be remembered. It has been only 11 years since we experienced an event that not even the most optimistic amongst us would have predicted before 1997. Let us place the facts in time. At the beginning of the 80s, we faced the distressing reality that more than three quarters of all children, men and women found to have antibodies directed against a new infectious agent named human immune deficient virus (HIV) were bound to die. The mere reactivity of the serum of a human being against a virus characterized in 1983 (antibodies) handed an almost inevitable sentence of death. At that time the evolution of this viral infection was assessed by the quantification of a sub type of white cells, the auxiliary lymphocytes or CD4. This count was the principal evidence for most of the predictions on how a person might survive without degradation, and the value of such cells was the abacus used to forecast the time when an individual would develop irreversible blindness, to anticipate respiratory failure, and to predict the time before weakness would appear after devastating diarrhea, etc. We should recall that the CD4 cell count was even used as a predictor of the initiation of cognitive shrinkage, forecasting dementia as well as the signs that would take hold of personality as a consequence of infections or neoplastic transformations in the encephalitic mass.

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