Innovative strategie di lotta contro i patogeni di origine alimentare: nuove prospettive per l'industria alimentare

Molti agenti responsabili di Malattie a trasmissione alimentare (MTA), come Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus e Salmonella enterica, possono facilmente produrre biofilm, costituendo un problema di sicurezza alimentare e, conseguentemente, di salute pubblica. I biofilm batterici sui piani di lavorazione degli alimenti, infatti, possono rappresentare fonti critiche di contaminazione, essendo più resistenti alle procedure di pulizia e disinfezione. Nell'industria alimentare, la sanitizzazione degli ambienti di lavoro e delle superfici a contatto con gli alimenti avviene normalmente attraverso l'utilizzo di composti chimici. Questo approccio, oltre che essere impattante per l'ambiente, può promuovere la resistenza batterica e non rivelarsi del tutto efficace nell'eradicazione del biofilm. Negli ultimi anni, nell'ottica di un minor utilizzo di sostanze chimiche nelle fasi di detersione e disinfezione, si sta focalizzando l'attenzione su sostanze antibatteriche di nuova generazione come i peptidi antimicrobici (AMPs). Tali molecole fanno parte del sistema immunitario innato degli organismi superiori e rappresentano la prima linea di difesa contro numerosi agenti patogeni. La scarsa specificità li rende potenzialmente attivi a concentrazioni relativamente basse contro un largo spettro di agenti microbici e quindi interessanti per le molteplici possibili applicazioni. Scopo della tesi è stato la valutazione dell'attività antimicrobica e anti-biofilm di una molecola di nuova sintesi, appartenente al gruppo dei peptidi antimicrobici naturali (AMPs) e denominata PEP1. Questo AMP, ottenuto per sostituzione amminoacidica da IDR 1018 (derivato dalla bactenecina bovina), ha rivelato una significativa efficienza battericida e di prevenzione del biofilm contro un ceppo ATCC di riferimento di Listeria monocytogenes e una notevole stabilità in diverse condizioni ambientali. Nel corso delle sperimentazioni, studi in vitro hanno permesso di valutare la cinetica di azione di AMP PEP1 contro ceppi di riferimento di Staphylococcus aureus (tra cui uno resistente alla meticillina) e contro un ceppo moderato produttore di biofilm di S. aureus enterotossigeno isolato da matrice alimentare. Il peptide ha mostrato un'azione rapida e notevole. Ulteriori ricerche hanno mirato a valutare l'efficacia di AMP PEP1 anche contro batteri patogeni Gram-negativi. Salmonella enterica è stata scelta come rappresentativa dell'intero gruppo. Nello studio sono stati inclusi 44 ceppi appartenenti a tre diverse sottospecie e 35 diversi sierotipi, di cui è stato determinato anche il profilo antimicrobico. Infine, lo studio si è focalizzato sulla funzionalizzazione del peptide e sulla valutazione dell'attività antimicrobica di nanobiocomplessi risultanti dalla coniugazione covalente di AMP PEP1 alla superficie di nanoparticelle ibride polimero-oro (AuNPs), preliminari all'applicazione del peptide come sanitizzante di nuova generazione nel comparto dell'industria agro-alimentare

Association between type 1 diabetes and female sexual dysfunction

Background: This study aims to evaluate: 1) the prevalence of Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD) in women affected by type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and the control group; 2) the correlation between duration of DM, HbA1C levels and sexual life quality; 3) the relationship between different methods of insulin administration and sexual life quality; 4) the correlation between FSD and diabetes complications. Methods: We selected 33 women with type 1 DM and 39 healthy women as controls. Each participant underwent a detailed medical history and physical examination and completed the 6-item Female Sexual Function Index questionnaire (FSFI-6). In patients affected by type 1 DM, the different methods of insulin administration (Multi Drug Injection - MDI or Continuous Subcutaneous Insulin Infusion - CSII) and the presence of DM complications were also investigated. Results: The prevalence of FSD (total score≤19) was significantly higher in the type 1 DM group than in the control group (12/33, 36.4% and 2/39, 5.2%, respectively; p =0.010). No statistically significant differences were found regarding FSD according to the presence of complications, method of insulin administration or previous pregnancies. Conclusions: This study underlined that FSD is higher in women affected by type 1 DM than in healthy controls. This could be due to the diabetic neuropathy/angiopathy and the type of insulin administration. Therefore, it is important to investigate FSD in diabetic women, as well as erectile dysfunction in diabetic men

A Study on the Antimicrobial and Antibiofilm Peptide 1018-K6 as Potential Alternative to Antibiotics against Food-Pathogen Salmonella enterica

Antimicrobial resistance has become one of the major global public health concerns, and it is indispensable to search for alternatives to conventional antibiotics. Recently, antimicrobial peptides have received great attention because of their broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity at relatively low concentrations, even against pathogens such as Salmonella enterica, which is responsible for most food-borne illnesses. This work aimed at evaluating the antimicrobial and antibiofilm activity of the innate defense peptide, named 1018-K6, against S. enterica. A total of 42 strains, belonging to three different subspecies and 32 serotypes, were included in this study. The antibiotic resistance profile of all the strains and the cytotoxic effects of 1018-K6 on mammalian fibroblast cells were also investigated. Results revealed that MIC (minimum inhibitory concentrations) and MBC (minimum bactericidal concentrations) values were in the ranges of 8–64 μg/mL and 16–128 μg/mL, respectively, although most strains (97%) showed MICs between 16 and 32 μg/mL. Moreover, sub-inhibitory concentrations of 1018-K6 strongly reduced the biofilm formation in several S. enterica strains, whatever the initial inoculum size. Our results demonstrated that 1018-K6 is able to control and manage S. enterica growth with a large potential for applications in the fields of active packaging and water disinfectantsThis research was funded by: Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico “Packaging Bioattivi e bIOsanitizzanti: Sviluppo di stratEgie iNnovaTIve ed ecososteNibili pEr L’Industria Alimentare—(BIO-SENTINEL) project, grant number F/200092/01-03/X45. Fondo per la Crescita Sostenibile—Sportello “Agrifood” PON I&C 2014-2020; Regione Campania-“Sviluppo di una tecnologia Intelligente contro spoilage ed agenti patogeni: dal peptide antimicrobico ad un PACKaging innovativo nella filiera ittica del Mediterraneo (iPACK-Med)project, grant number PO FEAMP 2014/2020, MISURA 1.26 “INNOVAZIONE” DD n. 266/2019-n. B68D19001380009; Ministero della Salute-“Attività battericida ed anti-biofilm di nano-sistemi ibridi coniugati con peptidi antimicrobici: una nuova strategia per la formulazione di bio-sanitizzanti contro ceppi patogeni resistenti”- Ricerca Corrente 2018 project, grant number IZS ME 06/18 RCS

How future surgery will benefit from SARS-COV-2-related measures: a SPIGC survey conveying the perspective of Italian surgeons

COVID-19 negatively affected surgical activity, but the potential benefits resulting from adopted measures remain unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the change in surgical activity and potential benefit from COVID-19 measures in perspective of Italian surgeons on behalf of SPIGC. A nationwide online survey on surgical practice before, during, and after COVID-19 pandemic was conducted in March-April 2022 (NCT:05323851). Effects of COVID-19 hospital-related measures on surgical patients' management and personal professional development across surgical specialties were explored. Data on demographics, pre-operative/peri-operative/post-operative management, and professional development were collected. Outcomes were matched with the corresponding volume. Four hundred and seventy-three respondents were included in final analysis across 14 surgical specialties. Since SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, application of telematic consultations (4.1% vs. 21.6%; p < 0.0001) and diagnostic evaluations (16.4% vs. 42.2%; p < 0.0001) increased. Elective surgical activities significantly reduced and surgeons opted more frequently for conservative management with a possible indication for elective (26.3% vs. 35.7%; p < 0.0001) or urgent (20.4% vs. 38.5%; p < 0.0001) surgery. All new COVID-related measures are perceived to be maintained in the future. Surgeons' personal education online increased from 12.6% (pre-COVID) to 86.6% (post-COVID; p < 0.0001). Online educational activities are considered a beneficial effect from COVID pandemic (56.4%). COVID-19 had a great impact on surgical specialties, with significant reduction of operation volume. However, some forced changes turned out to be benefits. Isolation measures pushed the use of telemedicine and telemetric devices for outpatient practice and favored communication for educational purposes and surgeon-patient/family communication. From the Italian surgeons' perspective, COVID-related measures will continue to influence future surgical clinical practice

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

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

Il mIele è un indicatore dI quaIità ambientale - Environmental pollution: honey as a bioindicator

Many pollutants in the environment may contaminate bee matrices, comprising bee, honey and pollen. The contamination sources can be roughly divided into environmental and apicultural. The article reviewed the literature data about honey contamination, focusing on honey as potential bioindicator of environmental pollution. Contaminants as pesticides (insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, bactericides), veterinary drugs and antibiotics, organic pollutants, heavy metals (cadmium and mercury), radioactive isotopes, and genetically modified organisms, are the most abundant and frequently occurred in honey. EU regulations fixed maximum residue limits only for some pollutants. As exposures to environmental pollution remain a major source of health risk, the introduction of monitoring systems and validation of acceptable minimal concentrations of pollutant residue limits for honey should be considered