Background: Malfunctioning or damaged mitochondria result in altered energy metabolism, redox equilibrium, and cellular dynamics and is a central point in the pathogenesis of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to identify mitochondrial genetic susceptibility markers for neurodegenerative diseases. Potential markers include the respiratory chain enzymes Riboflavin kinase (RFK), Flavin adenine dinucleotide synthetase (FAD), Succinate dehydrogenase B subunit (SDHB), and Cytochrome C1 (CYC1). These enzymes are associated with neuroprotection and neurodegeneration. Objective: To test if variants in genes RFK, FAD, SDHB and CYC1 deviate from Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) in different human mitochondrial haplogroups. Methods: Sequence variants in genes RFK, FAD, SDHB and CYC1 of 2,504 non-affected individuals of the 1,000 genomes project were used for mitochondrial haplogroup assessment and HWE calculations in different mitochondrial haplogroups. Results: We show that RFK variants deviate from HWE in haplogroups G, H, L, V and W, variants of FAD in haplogroups B, J, L, U, and C, variants of SDHB in relation to the C, W, and A and CYC1 variants in B, L, U, D, and T. HWE deviation indicates action of selective pressures and genetic drift. Conclusions: HWE deviation of particular variants in relation to global populational HWE, could be, at least in part, associated with the differential susceptibility of specific populations and ethnicities to neurodegenerative diseases. Our data might contribute to the epidemiology and diagnostic/prognostic methods for neurodegenerative diseases.

The use of medical technologies has grown steadily in all health fields, offering numerous benefits to patients. However, related adverse events, which may cause severe consequences for patients, also have increased. Technical factors and human aspects that cause dangers to patients may be related to the complexity of the devices, quality control in manufacturing, software used, maintenance procedures, materials, and mode of use. Thereby, our objective is to present the main alerts, dangers, and failures related to medical equipment and ways to attenuate them. For that purpose, we performed an analysis of adverse events reported for medical equipment in the Food Drugs Administration (FDA/USA) and the Brazilian Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) databases, since 2016. Finally, we classified the events into different categories, according to similarity. The results show a total of 3,100 cases registered in the FDA for six types of equipment at the study and 75 cases in ANVISA for two of these equipment. Based on the top ten health hazards (2016-2020) provided by the Emergency Care Research Institute (ECRI) we were able to understand which equipment most offers hazards and the main ways to mitigate them. We found that the risks are common to medical devices, therefore, it is crucial that there are preventative measures to avoid them, for example, training users to use the products, maintenance, improving quality, and reporting adverse events to manufacturers.

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