Climate Change in the Southern Gulf Region: a background paper to inform the Southern Gulf Natural Resource Management Plan

[Extract] The Southern Gulf region is situated in the far north-west of Queensland and covers all catchments that drain into the southern Gulf of Carpentaria between Karumba and just west of the Northern Territory border. Land systems of the region are mostly extensive plains and dissected uplands in the south-west, around Mount Isa. Only around 5% of the native vegetation of the region has been cleared, mostly for urban and agricultural development. The remaining native vegetation, mostly comprising tropical savannahs, grasslands and extensive coastal wetlands remains largely intact although disturbed by grazing and land degradation, in particular weed invasion. The dominant land use in the region is cattle grazing undertaken on freehold land (chiefly in the south east of the region) or leasehold land (the remainder). The Boodjamulla National Park is a significant feature of the north west of the region. Land reserved for nature conservation has increased in recent years with the addition of new nature refuges and Indigenous Protected Areas

Impact of social complexity on outcomes in cystic fibrosis after transfer to adult care

Objective This study evaluates the roles of medical and social complexity in health care use outcomes in cystic fibrosis (CF) after transfer from pediatric to adult care. Methods Retrospective cohort design included patients with CF who were transitioned into adult care at Indiana University from 2005 to 2015. Predictor variables included demographic and comorbidity data, age at transition, treatment complexity score (TCS), and an objective scoring measure of their social complexity (Bob's Level of Social Support, BLSS). Outcome variables included outpatient visit rates and hospitalization rates. Pearson's correlations and linear regression were used to analyze the data. Results The median age of the patients (N = 133) at the time of transition was 20 (IQR 19‐23) years. The mean FEV1 % predicted at transition was 69 ± 24%. TCS correlated with outpatient visit rates (r = 0.3, P = 0.003), as well as hospitalization rates (r = 0.4, P < 0.001); while the BLSS only correlated with hospitalization rates (r = 0.7, P < 0.001). After adjusting for covariates, the strongest predictors of post‐transfer hospitalizations are BLSS (P < 0.0001) and pre‐transfer hospitalization rate (P < 0.0001). Conclusion Greater treatment complexity is associated with greater healthcare utilization overall, while greater social complexity is associated with increased hospitalizations (but not outpatient visits). Screening young adults for social complexity may identify high‐risk subpopulations and allow for patient centered interventions to support them and prevent avoidable health care use

Regional natural resource management plan

[Extract] This plan builds on, updates and refines earlier NRM planning work in the region. The 2005 Southern Gulf Catchment Natural Resource Management Plan provided a comprehensive assessment of the natural resource values and issues in the Southern Gulf region and provided a long list of actions to address them. SG NRM’s work was aligned to this plan, but because the plan’s scope was so large, and because it did not provide a good guide for prioritising actions in the face of limited resources, the plan fell into abeyance. In 2014, the Australian Government provided funding to update the region’s NRM plan to incorporate climate change considerations through its Regional Natural Resource Management Planning for Climate Change Fund. Although there has been much progress in the region, many of NRM issues remain the same as they were in 2005. SG NRM therefore determined that the revised plan would draw on the good foundations of the earlier plan, but that its scope would be more strategic and its objectives more achievable. Therefore, it was decided that the scope of this plan is to• Update the 2005 Southern Gulf Catchment Natural Resource Management Plan • Incorporate climate change considerations• Acknowledge the range of NRM issues across in the Southern Gulf region, including issues that have arisen since 2005• Provide action plans to address these issues, focusing on the role of SG NRM and what it can achieve through its partnerships with the Southern Gulf community. SG NRM will use this plan as a guiding document to plan its investments and effort. The plan may also be used by Southern Gulf stakeholders to identify constructive approaches to addressing NRM issues in the region and potential partnerships with SG NRM. However, the plan does not commit either SG NRM or its partners to any specific action

Planning for climate change northern monsoon cluster: decision making and planning for natural resource management

Natural resource managers are tasked with a range of challenging and sometimes competing management objectives but often have limited resources with which to achieve them. Natural resource management (NRM) objectives typically include conserving biodiversity, maintaining healthy ecosystems, achieving water quality targets and restoring degraded habitats. A key challenge is to identify where, when and how to implement effective activities to achieve these objectives with the least cost and impact on stakeholders. This project provided and tested an appropriate decision support framework for cross-realm planning and supporting synthesis of NRM plans to assist natural resource management groups in northern Australia successfully tackle this challenge

Visualization of membrane loss during the shrinkage of giant vesicles under electropulsation

We study the effect of permeabilizing electric fields applied to two different types of giant unilamellar vesicles, the first formed from EggPC lipids and the second formed from DOPC lipids. Experiments on vesicles of both lipid types show a decrease in vesicle radius which is interpreted as being due to lipid loss during the permeabilization process. We show that the decrease in size can be qualitatively explained as a loss of lipid area which is proportional to the area of the vesicle which is permeabilized. Three possible mechanisms responsible for lipid loss were directly observed: pore formation, vesicle formation and tubule formation.Comment: Final published versio

Mutation spectrum of NOD2 reveals recessive inheritance as a main driver of Early Onset Crohn’s Disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), clinically defined as Crohn’s disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC), or IBD-unclassified, results in chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract in genetically susceptible hosts. Pediatric onset IBD represents ≥ 25% of all IBD diagnoses and often presents with intestinal stricturing, perianal disease, and failed response to conventional treatments. NOD2 was the first and is the most replicated locus associated with adult IBD, to date. However, its role in pediatric onset IBD is not well understood. We performed whole-exome sequencing on a cohort of 1,183 patients with pediatric onset IBD (ages 0–18.5 years). We identified 92 probands with biallelic rare and low frequency NOD2 variants accounting for approximately 8% of our cohort, suggesting a Mendelian inheritance pattern of disease. Additionally, we investigated the contribution of recessive inheritance of NOD2 alleles in adult IBD patients from a large clinical population cohort. We found that recessive inheritance of NOD2 variants explains ~ 7% of cases in this adult IBD cohort, including ~ 10% of CD cases, confirming the observations from our pediatric IBD cohort. Exploration of EHR data showed that several of these adult IBD patients obtained their initial IBD diagnosis before 18 years of age, consistent with early onset disease. While it has been previously reported that carriers of more than one NOD2 risk alleles have increased susceptibility to Crohn’s Disease (CD), our data formally demonstrate that recessive inheritance of NOD2 alleles is a mechanistic driver of early onset IBD, specifically CD, likely due to loss of NOD2 protein function. Collectively, our findings show that recessive inheritance of rare and low frequency deleterious NOD2 variants account for 7–10% of CD cases and implicate NOD2 as a Mendelian disease gene for early onset Crohn’s Disease

Intervenciones en SARS-CoV-2 en el marco de Una Salud: Medidas para controlar la transmisión de la enfermedad a 110 días de pandemia en la Provincia de Rio Negro

In December 2019, an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus began, called SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19, which reached pandemic dimensions on March 11, 2020. By March 3, it had already entered República Argentina, while on March 9 the first case occurred in the Province of Rio Negro. In this province, 823 cases were identified with 41 deaths and 602 recovered cases by June 30, giving rise to successive intervention strategies to prevent its arrival in some places without viral circulation, to control outbreaks occurred and, when this objective was achieved, to avoid reintroduction. Among all measures, those related to non-pharmaceutical Interventions or NFI based on Primary Health Care and One Health with integrated participation among health agents of the First Level of Care, veterinary public health and medical areas of the Departments of Activities for the Area and Its Primary Health Care Centers and epidemiology services are a central, highly effective and essential strategy to cut the transmission chain and decreasethe agent’s reproductive capacity (R0) to a value &lt;1. The activities carried out from the appearance of cases were described in the towns of El Bolsón, San Carlos de Bariloche, General Roca and Choele Choel in the Province of Rio Negro during 110 days of the pandemic.En el mes de Diciembre de 2019, comenzó un brote de un novel coronavirus de origen zoonótico, denominado SARS-CoV-2 o COVID-19, que alcanzó dimensiones de pandemia el 11 de marzo de 2020. Ya el 3 de marzo de 2020, había ingresado a la República Argentina, mientras que el 9 de marzo se produjo el primer caso en la Provincia de Rio Negro. En esta provincia, al 30 de junio se identifican 823 casos con 41 defunciones y 602 casos recuperados, dando lugar a sucesivas estrategias de intervención para evitar su llegada a algunas localidades sin circulación viral, controlar los brotes ocurridos y, cuando este objetivo es logrado, evitar la reintroducción. Entre todas las medidas, las vinculadas a Intervenciones no farmacéuticas o INF basadas en Atención Primaria de la Salud y Una Salud con participación integrada  entre agentes sanitarios del Primer Nivel de Atención, salud pública veterinaria y áreas médicas de los Departamentos de Actividades para el Área y sus Centros de Atención Primaria de la Salud y servicios de epidemiologia, son una estrategia central, altamente efectiva e imprescindible para cortar la cadena de transmisión y disminuir la capacidad reproductiva del agente (R0) a un valor &lt; a 1. Se describen las actividades desarrolladas a partir de la aparición de casos en las localidades de El Bolsón, San Carlos de Bariloche, General Roca y Choele Choel en la Provincia de Rio Negro, República Argentina, durante 110 días de pandemia

Obstacles to public health that even pandemics cannot overcome : the politics of Covid-19 on the island of Ireland

The relationship between politics and public health is increasingly evident as governments throughout the world vary in their acceptance and implementation of technical guidance in the response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This paper reports a qualitative study of public health policies for Covid-19 in Northern Ireland (NI) and the Republic of Ireland (RoI) across a timeline emphasising the first wave of the pandemic (February to June 2020). Inter-jurisdictional commitments for health as contained in the Good Friday Agreement provide a framework for cooperation and coordination of population health on the island of Ireland. This study of north-south cooperation in the response to Covid-19 applies ten indicators from the Oxford Covid-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) codebook to establish if cooperation and policy alignment of key public health measures are evident in the Northern Ireland Assembly and Government of Ireland responses. The study concludes that notwithstanding the historical and constitutional obstacles to an all-island response to Covid-19, there is evidence of significant public health policy alignment brought about through ongoing dialogue and cooperation between the health administrations in each jurisdiction over the course of the first wave of the pandemic

Cystic echinococcosis in dogs and children in the province of Río Negro, Argentina

Fil: Larrieu, Edmundo. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro, Viedma, Argentina; Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro; Argentina.  Fil: Seleiman, Marcos. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Herrero, Eduardo. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Mujica, Guillermo. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Labanchi, Jose Luis. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Araya, Daniel. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Grizmado, Claudia. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Sepulveda, Luis. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Calabro, Arnoldo. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Talmon, Gabriel. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Crowley, Pablo. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro, Viedma, Argentina; Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias, Universidad Nacional de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Albarracin, Silvina. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Arezo, Marcos. ANLIS Dr.C.G.Malbrán. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Infecciosas. Departamento de Parasitología; Argentina.Fil: Volpe, Marcela. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Avila, A. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Perez, Alicia. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Uchiumi, Leonardo. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Salvitti, Juan Carlos. Ministerio de Salud, Provincia de Río Negro; Argentina.Fil: Santillan, Graciela. ANLIS Dr.C.G.Malbrán. Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Infecciosas. Departamento de Parasitología; Argentina.Cystic echinococcosis (CE) is an endemic disease in the province of Río Negro, Argentina. The control program against CE has developed monitoring surveillance systems. Currently, the coproELISA/Western blot (WB) test is used to determine transmission in livestock farms (epidemiological units or EU) from collected dry field-dispersed dog feces. The objective was to evaluate the prevalence of CE on livestock farms and its relationship with CE cases in children aged 0-14 years. Canine fecal samples were obtained from randomly selected livestock farms and processed by the coproELISA/WB test. Furthermore, new cases in children in the same age group mentioned above were identified. In 278 EU, 571 samples of canine feces were obtained. There were 37 positive samples for coproELISA/WB (6.5%) and the presence of transmission was demonstrated in 37 EU (13.3%). There were no significant differences (p=0.9) with the survey conducted in the period 2003-2004 while there were significant differences (p=0.02) with the EU survey of native populations conducted in 2009-2010. With respect to animal density in the work area, the EU yielding negative results had an average of 2 dogs (SD 2.1) per EU while in the EU having positive results the average was 3 dogs (SD 4.2), showing statistically significant differences (p=0.02). In children under 15 years of age, 12 cases were diagnosed. This study has identified, on average, that the cases of hydatid disease are closer in the positive fields than in the negative fields (p=0.00307).The coproELISA/WB test allowed to identify the dispersion of CE on livestock farms and its relationship with the occurrence of cases in children in 2009-2010