Contemporary migratory flows since the 20th century have undergone a radical metamorphosis, revealing unprecedented aspects of migratory phenomena that require complex reflection. Definitions and conceptualizations of the “other”, “foreigner”, “migrant”, are social and institutional constructions of the figure of the migrant. A deep philosophical reflection can lead to a debate on how conceptions of the “migrant” are intertwined with structures of power, domination and processes of inclusion and exclusion. The aim of this research is to critically analyze the construction of the “other” as an enemy in the context of migration, probing the different discursive tactics and mental representations of reality used to legitimize exclusion against migrants. The present research is an interpretation of philosophy developed with an analytical-linguistic and hermeneutic method....

Muchos de los progresos recientes en la comprensión de la patogénesis de trastornos comunes y raros del sistema nervioso se han producido mediante el uso de tejido cerebral humano post-mortem. Los bancos de cerebros han tenido un papel crucial en este proceso, proporcionando  material raro e invaluable. La función de un banco de cerebro moderno es recolectar material post-mortem o de biopsia de casos clínicamente y patológicamente bien caracterizados de manera continua y sistemática, considerando cuestiones de seguridad y éticas que rodean el uso de tejido humano donado para investigación médica. El presente artículo llama la atención sobre la importancia de los bancos de cerebro, en la recolección y almacenamiento de material post-mortem para satisfacer las necesidades de proyectos de investigación específicos, los aspectos tanto técnicos como éticos y legales, relacion...

In Peru, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) arises in young non-cirrhotic patients. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is suspected to be the prominent etiological agent. We thus performed a comprehensive molecular study of HBV infection in 65 Peruvian HCC patients. Only 51% were considered as persistently infected at the onset. HBV DNA was found by PCR in the tumor and/or matched non-tumor liver tissues in more than 80% of cases (n = 53/65). HBV DNA was significantly more abundant in livers of younger patients than in those of the older ones. We consistently observed low viral DNA burden (0.1-6.5 copies for 100 cells), with viral genomes in younger patients displaying higher proportion of mutations at di-pyrimidines (TpT and CpC, P = 0.006). A drastic activation of multiple DNA repair pathways in tumors of younger patients was observed. Our observations clearly challenge the current vision that associ...

In the developing world, most patients with hepatocellular carcinoma present with advanced-stage disease, considered to be incurable based on current therapeutic algorithms. Here, we demonstrate that curative liver resection is achievable in a portion of Peruvian patients not addressed by these treatment algorithms. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of 253 hepatocellular carcinoma patients that underwent a curative hepatectomy between 1991 and 2011 at the National Cancer Institute of Peru. The median age of the cohort was 36 years, and merely 15.4% of the patients displayed cirrhosis. The average tumor size was over 14 cm in diameter, resulting in 76.3% of major hepatectomies performed. The 5- and 10-year survival probability estimates were 37.5% and 26.2%, respectively. Age (>44 vs. ≤44 years old; P = 0.005), tumor size (>10 cm vs. ≤10 cm in diameter; P = 0.009), cirrhosis (...

Pseudocereals are best known for three crops derived from the Andes: quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa), canihua (C. pallidicaule), and kiwicha (Amaranthus caudatus). Their grains are recognized for their nutritional benefits; however, there is a higher level of polyphenism. Meanwhile, the chemical food safety of pseudocereals remains poorly documented. Here, we applied untargeted and targeted metabolomics approaches by LC-MS to achieve both: i) a comprehensive chemical mapping of pseudocereal samples collected in the Andes; and ii) a quantification of their contents in emerging mycotoxins. An inventory of the fungal community was also realized to better know the fungi present in these grains. Metabotyping permitted to add new insights into the chemotaxonomy of pseudocereals, confirming the previously established phylotranscriptomic clades. Sixteen samples from Peru (out of 27) and one from Fra...

Among the most frequent malignancies worldwide, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related death (1). Its incidence has doubled over the past two decades, with the greatest burden occurring in low- and middle-income countries. Malignant primary liver tumors are usually described as a pathology affecting mainly men older than 40 years with a cirrhotic liver; they have rarely been reported in younger people and usually, in those younger than 40, most commonly hepatoblastoma.

This study was funded by the French National League against Cancer (team label LNCC) and Odyssey-RE; E.D., S.B., and P.P. were supported by the Third Cancer Plan, ITMO Cancer of the French National Alliance for Life Sciences and Health (ENV201408); J.P.C. was a recipient of a doctoral fellowship from the Peruvian National Council for Science and Technology (212-2015-FONDECYT); L.C. was a recipient of a doctoral fellowship from French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) (EMHE-ARTS-2016-878573B); and L.C., E.R., and S.C. were supported by the Young Research Teams Associated with IRD Program (INCAncer). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The authors wish to acknowledge all patients whose participation was essential to the achievement of this study. The authors are grateful to...

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: TRR was a recipient of a doctoral fellowship from Innóvate Perú (069-FINCyT-BDE-2014); JPC was a recipient of a doctoral fellowship from the Peruvian National Council for Science and Technology (212-2015-FONDECYT); ER and FD were supported by the Young Research Teams Associated with IRD Program (JEAI-INCAncer); and GB, PP, JG, ED, and SB were supported by the Third Cancer Plan of the French National Alliance for Life Sciences and Health (ENV201408).

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) usually afflicts individuals in their maturity after a protracted liver disease. Contrasting with this pattern, the age structure of HCC in Andean people displays a bimodal distribution with half of the patients developing HCC in adolescence and early adulthood. To deepen our understanding of the molecular determinants of the disease in this population, we conducted an integrative analysis of gene expression and DNA methylation in HCC developed by 74 Peruvian patients, including 39 adolescents and young adults. While genome-wide hypomethylation is considered as a paradigm in human HCCs, our analysis revealed that Peruvian tumors are associated with a global DNA hypermethylation. Moreover, pathway enrichment analysis of transcriptome data characterized an original combination of signatures. Peruvian HCC forgoes canonical activations of IGF2, Notch, Ras/MAPK,...

We sought to review literature on the prevalence of symptoms of depression in women with a diagnosis of breast cancer (BC) and in the Peruvian population determine the prevalence of symptoms of depression and to describe the association with sociodemographic characteristics. Descriptive cross-sectional analytical study of 254 patients from the National Cancer Institute of Peru (Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Neoplasicas) with a diagnosis of clinical stage I or II BC. The patients included women aged between 26 and 67 years old. Symptoms of depression were monitored by the Beck Depression Inventory-II. Moreover, clinical features and patient sociodemographic characteristics were analyzed and their association with depression was assessed by logistic regression. The average age of the patients was 47.8 +/- 9.2 years; 5.4% of the patients were postmenopausal at the time of the questionn...

We previously described a divergent clinical and molecular presentation of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in Peru. The present study aimed to further characterize the tissue features associated with this singular nosological form of HCC in order to gain insight into the natural history of the disease. We performed an exploratory analysis of the histology of both tumor and non-tumor liver (NTL) tissues from 50 Peruvian HCC patients, and compared with that of 75 individuals with non-HCC liver tumor or benign liver lesions as a baseline for NTL features. We complemented this approach with a transcriptome analysis in a subset of NTL tissue samples and also performed an ultra-sensitive hepatitis B virus (HBV) detection in liver tissues of the patients. Overall, results highlighted the low rate of liver parenchymal alterations in a young patient cohort (median age: 40 years old), despite a str...

En Perú, el carcinoma hepatocelular (CHC) ocupa el tercer lugar en incidencia entre los tumores del sistema digestivo, y tiene una alta tasa de mortalidad, 17.7 por 100,000 habitantes. La mayoría de los casos reportados no presentan la epidemiología clínica clásica del CHC observado en otras partes del mundo. Además, se ha identificado que estos pacientes presentan un perfil transcriptómico distinto y un proceso tumoral singular, sugiriendo un proceso particular de hepatocarcinogénesis en una fracción de la población peruana. El presente estudio busca comprender la implicancia clínica y biológica del perfil epigenético (metilación) y de expresión de los genes (transcriptómico) del CHC en los pacientes peruanos. Se evaluó el perfil de transcriptómico y de metilación de ADN de hígado y CHC en 74 pacientes peruanos. El agrupamiento por edades mostró una mayor metilació...

We previously described a divergent clinical and molecular presentation of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in Peru. The present study aimed to further characterize the tissue features associated with this singular nosological form of HCC in order to gain insight into the natural history of the disease. We performed an exploratory analysis of the histology of both tumor and non-tumor liver (NTL) tissues from 50 Peruvian HCC patients, and compared with that of 75 individuals with non-HCC liver tumor or benign liver lesions as a baseline for NTL features. We complemented this approach with a transcriptome analysis in a subset of NTL tissue samples and also performed an ultra-sensitive hepatitis B virus (HBV) detection in liver tissues of the patients. Overall, results highlighted the low rate of liver parenchymal alterations in a young patient cohort (median age: 40 years old), despite a str...

This work was supported by the Alliance pour les Sciences de la Vie et de la Santé (AVIESAN), ITMO Cancer ENV201408 (to S.B.) and the Ligue Contre le Cancer (to P.P.). J.P.C. was a recipient of a doctoral scholarship from the Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico, Tecnológico y de Innovación Tecnológica (FONDECYT) 212-2015-FONDECYT and was supported by a fellowship from Campus France 941211E; L.C. was supported by a doctoral fellowship from IRD ARTS-2016-878573B; I.L. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fondation ARC pour la Recherche sur le Cancer PDF20170505624; J.J.F. has received funding from the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) under the Investments for the Future program 11-LABX-0068; S.C.Z. and E.R. have received funding from the World Bank Group and FONDECYT-CONCYTEC under the Research Infrastructure Improvement program 016-2018-FONDECYT/BM; and S.B. ...

Objective. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between anemia and depressive symptoms in patients with early stage breast cancer at the National Institute of Neoplastic Diseases (INEN), Lima, Peru. Methods. An analytical cross-sectional  observational study of 60 Peruvian women diagnosed with early stage I and II breast cancer was conducted between June 2019 and March 2020. All participants were assessed by Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDIII) score, had not received prior chemotherapy, and met the inclusion criteria. Each participant provided a blood sample that was used to estimate hemoglobin and red and white blood cell counts. Results. Of the 60 patients who met the inclusion criteria, twenty (33.3%) had depressive symptoms at the time of diagnosis. Mean hemoglobin levels in patients with depressive symptoms (M = 10.9, SD = 2.1) were lower compared to those in pa...

This study was funded by the French National Alliance for Life Sciences and Health (ENV201408); LC was a recipient of a doctoral fellowship from French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) (EMHE-ARTS-2016-878573B); JPC was a recipient of a doctoral fellowship from the Peruvian National Council for Science and Technology (212-2015-FONDECYT); SB has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework program under the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Actions 823935 and from the Alliance pour les Sciences de la Vie et de la Santé (AVIESAN), ITMO Cancer ENV201408, and LC, ER, and SCZ have received funding from the World Bank Group and FONDECYT-CONCYTEC 016-2018-FONDECYT/BM. The authors are grateful to Karina Cancino, Danny Cordova (INEN Cancer Research Biobank), Patricia Leroyer (NUMECAN), Alain Fautrel, Marine Seffals, Gevorg Ghukasyan (H2P2 platform). They a...

This research was funded by the French National Alliance for Life Sciences and Health, grant number ENV201408. S.B. has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, agreement number 823935. P.V.O. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) (04077858). JPC was a recipient of a doctoral fellowship from the Peruvian National Council for Science and Technology (212-2015-FONDECYT).