Early Release - Clinical Manifestations and Genomic Evaluation of Melioidosis Outbreak among Children after Sporting Event, Australia - Volume 29, Number 11—November 2023 - Emerging Infectious Diseases journal - CDC

Melioidosis, caused by the environmental gram-negative bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, usually develops in adults with predisposing conditions and in Australia more commonly occurs during the monsoonal wet season. We report an outbreak of 7 cases of melioidosis in immunocompetent children in Australia. All the children had participated in a single-day sporting event during the dry season in a tropical region of Australia, and all had limited cutaneous disease. All case-patients had an adverse reaction to oral trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole treatment, necessitating its discontinuation. We describe the clinical features, environmental sampling, genomic epidemiologic investigation, and public health response to the outbreak. Management of this outbreak shows the potential benefits of making melioidosis a notifiable disease. The approach used could also be used as a framework for similar outbreaks in the future

Biodiversity impacts of development pressures in Northern Ireland. Evidence review for Office of Environmental Protection

This report has been prepared for the Office of Environmental Protection in response to a brief to review the evidence of the impacts of development pressures on biodiversity in Northern Ireland. The Report describes how development pressures are defined and explains the methodology used in the review, including the search terms, geographic scope and criteria for inclusion and exclusion used to identify appropriate peer-reviewed research. This resulted in 70 papers being identified as relevant, and while this included individual useful studies that provide valuable evidence on specific forms of impact or on individual species or habitats, it became apparent that there is a lack of robust, systematic evidence on how development is impacting on biodiversity in Northern Ireland. In the absence of such evidence, the Report goes on to describe engagement with grey literature to identify other insights to assist in appraising the biodiversity impacts of development. Using data from Northern Ireland Government statistics, regulatory data and other sources, three development pressures are identified as most likely resulting in significant biodiversity impacts:• Land Use Change: Residential Development;• Land Use Change: Agricultural Development and Intensification;• Resource Use: Mining and Extraction.The evidence around each of these is reviewed, accompanied by a discussion of the wider range of other development pressures that may have biodiversity impacts. The report concludes by reflecting on the challenges in securing robust evidence for evaluating development impacts on biodiversity in Northern Ireland, and makes a number of recommendations on how this could be improved, including: more effective use of existing datasets; research tasks that could identify the impact of specific development pressures; and developing opportunities for ameliorating the impacts of development through the planning system