A study to develop neutron activation for measuring bone calcium content

Neutron activation analysis for measuring calcium in monkey bone

Incidence and Distribution of Microfungi in a Treated Municipal Water Supply System in Sub-Tropical Australia

Drinking water quality is usually determined by its pathogenic bacterial content. However, the potential of water-borne spores as a source of nosocomial fungal infection is increasingly being recognised. This study into the incidence of microfungal contaminants in a typical Australian municipal water supply was carried out over an 18 month period. Microfungal abundance was estimated by the membrane filtration method with filters incubated on malt extract agar at 25 °C for seven days. Colony forming units were recovered from all parts of the system and these were enumerated and identified to genus level. The most commonly recovered genera were Cladosporium, Penicillium, Aspergillus and Fusarium. Nonparametric multivariate statistical analyses of the data using MDS, PCA, BEST and bubble plots were carried out with PRIMER v6 software. Positive and significant correlations were found between filamentous fungi, yeasts and bacteria. This study has demonstrated that numerous microfungal genera, including those that contain species which are opportunistic human pathogens, populate a typical treated municipal water supply in sub-tropical Australia

Ethnic Variation in Inflammatory Profile in Tuberculosis

PMCID: PMC3701709This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Is drinking water a risk factor for endemic cryptosporidiosis? A case-control study in the immunocompetent general population of the San Francisco Bay Area

BACKGROUND: Cryptosporidiosis, caused by Cryptosporidium, is an enteric illness that has received much attention as an infection of immunocompromised persons as well as in community outbreaks (frequently waterborne). There are, however, no studies of the risk factors for sporadic community-acquired cryptosporidiosis in the immunocompetent US population. We undertook a case-control study in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of a national study sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ascertain the major routes of transmission for endemic cryptosporidiosis, with an emphasis on evaluating risk from drinking water. METHODS: Cases were recruited from a population-based, active surveillance system and age-matched controls were recruited using sequential random-digit dialing. Cases (n = 26) and controls (n = 62) were interviewed by telephone using a standardized questionnaire that included information about the following exposures: drinking water, recreational water, food items, travel, animal contact, and person-to-person fecal contact, and (for adults) sexual practices. RESULTS: In multivariate conditional logistic regression analyses no significant association with drinking water was detected. The major risk factor for cryptosporidiosis in the San Francisco Bay Area was travel to another country (matched odds ratio [95% confidence interval]: 24.1 [2.6, 220]). CONCLUSION: The results of this study do not support the hypothesis that drinking water is an independent risk factor for cryptosporidiosis among the immunocompetent population. These findings should be used to design larger studies of endemic cryptosporidiosis to elucidate the precise mechanisms of transmission, whether waterborne or other

Unexpected decline in tuberculosis cases coincident with economic recession -- United States, 2009

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since 1953, through the cooperation of state and local health departments, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has collected information on incident cases of tuberculosis (TB) disease in the United States. In 2009, TB case rates declined -11.4%, compared to an average annual -3.8% decline since 2000. The unexpectedly large decline raised concerns that TB cases may have gone unreported. To address the unexpected decline, we examined trends from multiple sources on TB treatment initiation, medication sales, and laboratory and genotyping data on culture-positive TB.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We analyzed 142,174 incident TB cases reported to the U. S. National Tuberculosis Surveillance System (NTSS) during January 1, 2000-December 31, 2009; TB control program data from 59 public health reporting areas; self-reported data from 50 CDC-funded public health laboratories; monthly electronic prescription claims for new TB therapy prescriptions; and complete genotyping results available for NTSS cases. Accounting for prior trends using regression and time-series analyses, we calculated the deviation between observed and expected TB cases in 2009 according to patient and clinical characteristics, and assessed at what point in time the deviation occurred.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The overall deviation in TB cases in 2009 was -7.9%, with -994 fewer cases reported than expected (<it>P </it>< .001). We ruled out evidence of surveillance underreporting since declines were seen in states that used new software for case reporting in 2009 as well as states that did not, and we found no cases unreported to CDC in our examination of over 5400 individual line-listed reports in 11 areas. TB cases decreased substantially among both foreign-born and U.S.-born persons. The unexpected decline began in late 2008 or early 2009, and may have begun to reverse in late 2009. The decline was greater in terms of case counts among foreign-born than U.S.-born persons; among the foreign-born, the declines were greatest in terms of percentage deviation from expected among persons who had been in the United States less than 2 years. Among U.S.-born persons, the declines in percentage deviation from expected were greatest among homeless persons and substance users. Independent information systems (NTSS, TB prescription claims, and public health laboratories) reported similar patterns of declines. Genotyping data did not suggest sudden decreases in recent transmission.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our assessments show that the decline in reported TB was not an artifact of changes in surveillance methods; rather, similar declines were found through multiple data sources. While the steady decline of TB cases before 2009 suggests ongoing improvement in TB control, we were not able to identify any substantial change in TB control activities or TB transmission that would account for the abrupt decline in 2009. It is possible that other multiple causes coincident with economic recession in the United States, including decreased immigration and delayed access to medical care, could be related to TB declines. Our findings underscore important needs in addressing health disparities as we move towards TB elimination in the United States.</p

Visual laterality in dolphins: importance of the familiarity of stimuli

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Many studies of cerebral asymmetries in different species lead, on the one hand, to a better understanding of the functions of each cerebral hemisphere and, on the other hand, to develop an evolutionary history of hemispheric laterality. Our animal model is particularly interesting because of its original evolutionary path, i.e. return to aquatic life after a terrestrial phase. The rare reports concerning visual laterality of marine mammals investigated mainly discrimination processes. As dolphins are migrant species they are confronted to a changing environment. Being able to categorize new versus familiar objects would allow dolphins a rapid adaptation to novel environments. Visual laterality could be a prerequisite to this adaptability. To date, no study, to our knowledge, has analyzed the environmental factors that could influence their visual laterality.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We investigated visual laterality expressed spontaneously at the water surface by a group of five common bottlenose dolphins (<it>Tursiops truncatus</it>) in response to various stimuli. The stimuli presented ranged from very familiar objects (known and manipulated previously) to familiar objects (known but never manipulated) to unfamiliar objects (unknown, never seen previously). At the group level, dolphins used their left eye to observe very familiar objects and their right eye to observe unfamiliar objects. However, eyes are used indifferently to observe familiar objects with intermediate valence.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results suggest different visual cerebral processes based either on the global shape of well-known objects or on local details of unknown objects. Moreover, the manipulation of an object appears necessary for these dolphins to construct a global representation of an object enabling its immediate categorization for subsequent use. Our experimental results pointed out some cognitive capacities of dolphins which might be crucial for their wild life given their fission-fusion social system and migratory behaviour.</p

The implications of three major new trials for the effect of water, sanitation and hygiene on childhood diarrhea and stunting: a consensus statement

BACKGROUND: Three large new trials of unprecedented scale and cost, which included novel factorial designs, have found no effect of basic water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions on childhood stunting, and only mixed effects on childhood diarrhea. Arriving at the inception of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, and the bold new target of safely managed water, sanitation and hygiene for all by 2030, these results warrant the attention of researchers, policy-makers and practitioners. MAIN BODY: Here we report the conclusions of an expert meeting convened by the World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to discuss these findings, and present five key consensus messages as a basis for wider discussion and debate in the WASH and nutrition sectors. We judge these trials to have high internal validity, constituting good evidence that these specific interventions had no effect on childhood linear growth, and mixed effects on childhood diarrhea. These results suggest that, in settings such as these, more comprehensive or ambitious WASH interventions may be needed to achieve a major impact on child health. CONCLUSION: These results are important because such basic interventions are often deployed in low-income rural settings with the expectation of improving child health, although this is rarely the sole justification. Our view is that these three new trials do not show that WASH in general cannot influence child linear growth, but they do demonstrate that these specific interventions had no influence in settings where stunting remains an important public health challenge. We support a call for transformative WASH, in so much as it encapsulates the guiding principle that - in any context - a comprehensive package of WASH interventions is needed that is tailored to address the local exposure landscape and enteric disease burden

Effects of Extreme Precipitation to the Distribution of Infectious Diseases in Taiwan, 1994–2008

The incidence of extreme precipitation has increased with the exacerbation of worldwide climate disruption. We hypothesize an association between precipitation and the distribution patterns that would affect the endemic burden of 8 infectious diseases in Taiwan, including water- and vector-borne infectious diseases. A database integrating daily precipitation and temperature, along with the infectious disease case registry for all 352 townships in the main island of Taiwan was analysed for the period from 1994 to 2008. Four precipitation levels, <130 mm, 130–200 mm, 200–350 mm and >350 mm, were categorized to represent quantitative differences, and their associations with each specific disease was investigated using the Generalized Additive Mixed Model and afterwards mapped on to the Geographical Information System. Daily precipitation levels were significantly correlated with all 8 mandatory-notified infectious diseases in Taiwan. For water-borne infections, extreme torrential precipitation (>350 mm/day) was found to result in the highest relative risk for bacillary dysentery and enterovirus infections when compared to ordinary rain (<130 mm/day). Yet, for vector-borne diseases, the relative risk of dengue fever and Japanese encephalitis increased with greater precipitation only up to 350 mm. Differential lag effects following precipitation were statistically associated with increased risk for contracting individual infectious diseases. This study’s findings can help health resource sector management better allocate medical resources and be better prepared to deal with infectious disease outbreaks following future extreme precipitation events