Secondary metabolites of marine-derived Bacillus spizizenii against the enteric redmouth disease in common carp, Cyprinus carpio

Looking for effective alternatives, such as secondary microbial metabolites, is needed to restrict the use of antibiotics in farmed fish and their detrimental effects on public health and the environment. Thirty-three water and sediments samples were collected from coastal areas in the Basrah Governorate, southern Iraq, to assess their biological activity against bacterial pathogens isolated from Cyprinus carpio, with enteric red mouth disease. 20 spore-forming bacteria were isolated and identified by VITEK BCL cards and amplifying the gyrA gene. Furthermore, the secondary metabolites produced by the strains were extracted and analyzed by GC-MS. Four pathogenic bacteria were isolated from common carp infected with the enteric red mouth disease. The antibacterial activity of the extracts of the isolated marine strains was examined on bacteria causing enteric red mouth disease and Y. ruckeri and P. aeruginosa. Based on the results, the marine isolates were identified as B. spizizenii and GC-MS analysis revealed that these strains' extract contained amino acids and their derivatives and esters and hydrocarbons. Also, biochemical identifications showed that the bacteria isolated from fish belonged to the species of Yersinia ruckeri, Aeromonas hydrophila, Streptococcus agalactiae, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. According to the antibacterial activity assay, the extracts of B. spizizenii strains were considerably active against bacteria involved in enteric red mouth disease, especially Y. ruckeri. These findings indicate marine B. spizizenii can be replaced with antibiotics in the aquaculture industry to combat infections

The Association between the Levels of Phosphodiesterase 9, Insulin-like peptide 5 and Obesity in Women

Background: The obesity epidemic is affecting worldwide health, increasing the risk of cardiovascular diseases such hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. this gave an impetus to study the new variables Insulin-like peptide 5, Phosphodiesterase 9 and their relationship as a cause or effect factors Objective: To validate any associations between Phosphodiesterase 9 (PDE9) and, Insulin-like peptide 5 (INSL5), specific factors and obesity, and to explore how they might integrate with other established agents to combat obesity and improve metabolism. Subjects and Methods: The study was based analytical cross-sectional research was conducted from (February 2022) to (August 2022). The study based on apparently healthy women (primary analyses were made, their blood sugar and lipid profile with the normal reference range) 50 women with age range (20 – 40) years. Fasting blood samples were collected from all the participants in this study, (5 ml) was poured in plane tubes and sera were separated by centrifuging the samples for 10 minutes at 3000rpm for the biochemical and hormonal investigations, therefore they were divided into two group: -first group: consisted of twenty-five obese women without previously diagnosed diseases (BMI>30 kg/m2) . second group: consisted of twenty-five women with normal BMI (BMI= 24.9-18.5 kg/m2). Results: Serum insulin-like peptide 5 showed significant increase in obese women without previously diagnosed diseases (16.31±3.88 µIU/ml), in comparison with women with normal BMI (11.17±3.88 µIU/ml). Serum PDE-9A significantly ((P≤ 0.05) decrease in obese women (6.77±1.95ng/ml), in comparison with women with normal BMI (8.11± 1.52ng/ml), Conclusions: Insulin-like peptide 5 (INSL5) could play in a role in promoting insulin resistance (IR), Phosphodiesterase 9 (PDE9) is a regulator of energy, Phosphodiesterase 9 (PDE9) inhibition is associated with increase the occurrence of insulin resistance

Goldilocks Energy Minimum: Peptide-Based Reversible Aggregation and Biosensing

Colorimetric biosensors based on gold nanoparticle (AuNP) aggregation are often challenged by matrix interference in biofluids, poor specificity, and limited utility with clinical samples. Here, we propose a peptide-driven nanoscale disassembly approach, where AuNP aggregates induced by electrostatic attractions are dissociated in response to proteolytic cleavage. Initially, citrate-coated AuNPs were assembled via a short cationic peptide (RRK) and characterized by experiments and simulations. The dissociation peptides were then used to reversibly dissociate the AuNP aggregates as a function of target protease detection, i.e., main protease (Mpro), a biomarker for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The dissociation propensity depends on peptide length, hydrophilicity, charge, and ligand architecture. Finally, our dissociation strategy provides a rapid and distinct optical signal through Mpro cleavage with a detection limit of 12.3 nM in saliva. Our dissociation peptide effectively dissociates plasmonic assemblies in diverse matrices including 100% human saliva, urine, plasma, and seawater, as well as other types of plasmonic nanoparticles such as silver. Our peptide-enabled dissociation platform provides a simple, matrix-insensitive, and versatile method for protease sensing

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Mortality from gastrointestinal congenital anomalies at 264 hospitals in 74 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries: a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study

Summary Background Congenital anomalies are the fifth leading cause of mortality in children younger than 5 years globally. Many gastrointestinal congenital anomalies are fatal without timely access to neonatal surgical care, but few studies have been done on these conditions in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We compared outcomes of the seven most common gastrointestinal congenital anomalies in low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries globally, and identified factors associated with mortality. Methods We did a multicentre, international prospective cohort study of patients younger than 16 years, presenting to hospital for the first time with oesophageal atresia, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, intestinal atresia, gastroschisis, exomphalos, anorectal malformation, and Hirschsprung’s disease. Recruitment was of consecutive patients for a minimum of 1 month between October, 2018, and April, 2019. We collected data on patient demographics, clinical status, interventions, and outcomes using the REDCap platform. Patients were followed up for 30 days after primary intervention, or 30 days after admission if they did not receive an intervention. The primary outcome was all-cause, in-hospital mortality for all conditions combined and each condition individually, stratified by country income status. We did a complete case analysis. Findings We included 3849 patients with 3975 study conditions (560 with oesophageal atresia, 448 with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, 681 with intestinal atresia, 453 with gastroschisis, 325 with exomphalos, 991 with anorectal malformation, and 517 with Hirschsprung’s disease) from 264 hospitals (89 in high-income countries, 166 in middleincome countries, and nine in low-income countries) in 74 countries. Of the 3849 patients, 2231 (58·0%) were male. Median gestational age at birth was 38 weeks (IQR 36–39) and median bodyweight at presentation was 2·8 kg (2·3–3·3). Mortality among all patients was 37 (39·8%) of 93 in low-income countries, 583 (20·4%) of 2860 in middle-income countries, and 50 (5·6%) of 896 in high-income countries (p<0·0001 between all country income groups). Gastroschisis had the greatest difference in mortality between country income strata (nine [90·0%] of ten in lowincome countries, 97 [31·9%] of 304 in middle-income countries, and two [1·4%] of 139 in high-income countries; p≤0·0001 between all country income groups). Factors significantly associated with higher mortality for all patients combined included country income status (low-income vs high-income countries, risk ratio 2·78 [95% CI 1·88–4·11], p<0·0001; middle-income vs high-income countries, 2·11 [1·59–2·79], p<0·0001), sepsis at presentation (1·20 [1·04–1·40], p=0·016), higher American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score at primary intervention (ASA 4–5 vs ASA 1–2, 1·82 [1·40–2·35], p<0·0001; ASA 3 vs ASA 1–2, 1·58, [1·30–1·92], p<0·0001]), surgical safety checklist not used (1·39 [1·02–1·90], p=0·035), and ventilation or parenteral nutrition unavailable when needed (ventilation 1·96, [1·41–2·71], p=0·0001; parenteral nutrition 1·35, [1·05–1·74], p=0·018). Administration of parenteral nutrition (0·61, [0·47–0·79], p=0·0002) and use of a peripherally inserted central catheter (0·65 [0·50–0·86], p=0·0024) or percutaneous central line (0·69 [0·48–1·00], p=0·049) were associated with lower mortality. Interpretation Unacceptable differences in mortality exist for gastrointestinal congenital anomalies between lowincome, middle-income, and high-income countries. Improving access to quality neonatal surgical care in LMICs will be vital to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3.2 of ending preventable deaths in neonates and children younger than 5 years by 2030

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Chemical influence of nano-magnesium-oxide on properties of soft subgrade soil

Improving the properties of soft subgrade soils greatly helps in construction of strong and economical pavements. For this purpose, there are many traditional additives. However, these are often expensive and their production causes consumption of large amounts of energy and increases environmental pollution. Therefore, this study suggests the use of a modern alternative, nano-Magnesium-Oxide. In this study, soil from Baghdad city was selected and treated using different doses of the proposed additive namely )0.20, 0.40, 0.60, 0.80, 1.00, 1.20, 1.40, 1.60, 1.80, and 2.00)% by weight of dry soil to study the changes in its engineering properties. The study included conducting laboratory tests to compare the soil properties before and after treatment. These include the California Bearing Ratio Test (CBR) and measuring the swelling ratio to determine the changes in engineering properties and to determine the optimum dose. Thereafter, an Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy (EDXR- Spectroscopy) test was performed to determine the chemical reactions that contributed in changing of soil properties. The results showed noticeable improvement in the properties of the soil. CBR value of the soil treated with optimum dose (which is 0.80%) increased to about 1200% of its value for original soil. Moreover, swelling ratio of the soil treated with optimum dose decreased to about 10% of that recorded in original soil. EDXR- Spectroscopy tests exhibited the presence of influential chemical reactions between the additive and the soil that may create Magnesium Silicate Hydrate which formed strong bonds between the soil particles increased its tightness

A Proposal for Desert House Design in Egypt Using Passive Ground Cooling Techniques

An area less than 5.5% of Egyptian territory is where most of Egypt‘s population lives in. A narrow strip of land forms the Nile Valley and Delta sector.The National Project for Desert Hinterlands is one of the urban projects targeting rehabilitation of the poor in alternative villages in the near desert to stop urban sprawl over agricultural land and decrease the congestion in the old habitats. Low cost energy efficient houses are the aim of the architect in similar projects taking in consideration the high electricity consumption of Egypt’s residential sector. Based on a literature review, this paper presents a proposal for designing desert dwellings   that accommodates the hot dry climate by incorporating passive elements and using stabilized earth blocks as a local building material. Furthermore, simulation is used to test alternative proposals. The results show that an underground constructed house with a sunken courtyard incorporating an Earth to Air Heat Exchanger System (EAHE) can reduce between 42-72% of energy consumption used to achieve thermal comfort compared to contemporary desert housing projects. </p

Effectiveness of nanosilver fluoride and silver diamine fluoride in arresting early childhood caries: a randomized controlled clinical trial

Abstract Background One of the most prevalent health problems affecting children worldwide is untreated caries in primary teeth. Agents to arrest caries are used to manage untreated decay in children in disadvantaged communities. Nano Silver Fluoride (NSF) overcomes the staining problems of Silver Diamine Fluoride (SDF). This study compared the clinical cariostatic effect of NSF to 38% SDF for arresting caries lesions. Methods The study included 360 children younger than 4 years, with at least one active lesion, ICDAS score ≥ 3, recruited from nurseries in a rural area in Alexandria, Egypt, in 2022. They were randomly assigned to receive a single application of NSF at baseline, or two applications of SDF at baseline and after 6 months. The arrest of active carious lesions was assessed after 6 and 12 months using ICDAS criteria, and parents’ satisfaction with child appearance was also assessed. Chi-Square test was used to compare the groups and multi-level multiple logistic regression was used to assess the effect of the intervention on caries arrest at lesion level and binary logistic regression was used to assess the effect at patient level. Results 1853 active lesions were included in children whose mean (SD) age was 42.3 (8.2) months. The arrest rate was significantly higher in the NSF than the SDF group at lesion level (78.4% and 65.0% at 6 months and 71.3% and 56.3% at 12 months, p < 0.001). In regression analysis, NSF had significantly higher odds of caries arrest than SDF at lesion level (at 6 months, AOR = 2.57, 95% CI: 1.55, 4.26 and at 12 month, AOR = 3.27, 95% CI: 1.89, 5.67). Parents of children receiving NSF had significantly greater satisfaction with their children’s dental appearance than those receiving SDF: (97.2% and 76.1%, respectively, p < 0.001). Conclusion NSF demonstrated greater effectiveness in arresting caries in preschool children without inducing black staining of teeth and with greater parental satisfaction than SDF. NSF can be an alternative to SDF in arresting caries especially in underprivileged communities. Trial registration The trial was registered in the clinicaltrials.gov registry (#NCT05255913)-16/02/2022