Development of probiotics for the sustainable cultivation of pirarucu, Arapaima gigas

The pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) from Amazon basin is currently the largest farmed fish species and its production is increasing rapidly in Brazil. However, there is a concern about bacterial disease outbreaks and resulting mortalities in pirarucu farms. The use of probiotic bacteria as prophylactic method is recognized as beneficial practice to enhance fish production. The aim of this thesis was to isolate autochthonous probiotic strains from the pirarucu intestine, characterize their potential probiotic characteristics in vitro, and perform in vivo colonization and growth experiments. To this end, the intestinal microbial community of A. gigas was assessed at two different growth stages using high-throughput sequencing (HTS) analysis. Proteobacteria, Fusobacteria and Firmicutes were the most abundant phyla. At genus level Bradyrhizobium and Cetobacterium were the most abundant in adult and juvenile fish, respectively. In a further trial two isolated lactic acid bacteria (LAB): Lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis and Enterococcus faecium, showed in vitro suitability as probiotics. Two potential pathogens: Citrobacter freundii and Pseudomonas sp., were also isolated and their pathogenicity assessed. Subsequently, an in vivo experiment was performed to assess the potencial of LAB strains to colonise and modulate the gut microbiome of pirarucu after 21 days of feeding. The results showed a high abundance of Cetobacterium in all treatments. Additionally, both probiotic treatments decreased the levels of Clostridiales in pirarucu intestine and showed adherence to the fish mucosal tissue. Finally, a growth experiment was performed to assess the ability of to the candidate probiotics to improve growth parameters after 42 days of feeding. HTS confirmed that Cetobacterium was the most abundant genus in all treatments. Fish fed with L. lactis subsp. lactis presented higher percentage of increase (%I) of weight, specific growth rate (SGR), and monocytes in blood. The strain E. faecium interacted with the microbial gut community and was able to populate the mucosal tissue. In conclusion, both LAB strains presented probiotic characteristics and should be considered as probiotics in A. gigas farming. These probiotics could contribute to a reduction in antibiotics use in pirarucu farms, thus, adding value to the species as a sustainable aquaculture product

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities(.)(1,2) This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity(3-6). Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55% of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017-and more than 80% in some low- and middle-income regions-was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing-and in some countries reversal-of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories.Peer reviewe

Height and body-mass index trajectories of school-aged children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019 in 200 countries and territories: a pooled analysis of 2181 population-based studies with 65 million participants

Summary Background Comparable global data on health and nutrition of school-aged children and adolescents are scarce. We aimed to estimate age trajectories and time trends in mean height and mean body-mass index (BMI), which measures weight gain beyond what is expected from height gain, for school-aged children and adolescents. Methods For this pooled analysis, we used a database of cardiometabolic risk factors collated by the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration. We applied a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends from 1985 to 2019 in mean height and mean BMI in 1-year age groups for ages 5–19 years. The model allowed for non-linear changes over time in mean height and mean BMI and for non-linear changes with age of children and adolescents, including periods of rapid growth during adolescence. Findings We pooled data from 2181 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in 65 million participants in 200 countries and territories. In 2019, we estimated a difference of 20 cm or higher in mean height of 19-year-old adolescents between countries with the tallest populations (the Netherlands, Montenegro, Estonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina for boys; and the Netherlands, Montenegro, Denmark, and Iceland for girls) and those with the shortest populations (Timor-Leste, Laos, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea for boys; and Guatemala, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Timor-Leste for girls). In the same year, the difference between the highest mean BMI (in Pacific island countries, Kuwait, Bahrain, The Bahamas, Chile, the USA, and New Zealand for both boys and girls and in South Africa for girls) and lowest mean BMI (in India, Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia, and Chad for boys and girls; and in Japan and Romania for girls) was approximately 9–10 kg/m2. In some countries, children aged 5 years started with healthier height or BMI than the global median and, in some cases, as healthy as the best performing countries, but they became progressively less healthy compared with their comparators as they grew older by not growing as tall (eg, boys in Austria and Barbados, and girls in Belgium and Puerto Rico) or gaining too much weight for their height (eg, girls and boys in Kuwait, Bahrain, Fiji, Jamaica, and Mexico; and girls in South Africa and New Zealand). In other countries, growing children overtook the height of their comparators (eg, Latvia, Czech Republic, Morocco, and Iran) or curbed their weight gain (eg, Italy, France, and Croatia) in late childhood and adolescence. When changes in both height and BMI were considered, girls in South Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some central Asian countries (eg, Armenia and Azerbaijan), and boys in central and western Europe (eg, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, and Montenegro) had the healthiest changes in anthropometric status over the past 3·5 decades because, compared with children and adolescents in other countries, they had a much larger gain in height than they did in BMI. The unhealthiest changes—gaining too little height, too much weight for their height compared with children in other countries, or both—occurred in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, and the USA for boys and girls; in Malaysia and some Pacific island nations for boys; and in Mexico for girls. Interpretation The height and BMI trajectories over age and time of school-aged children and adolescents are highly variable across countries, which indicates heterogeneous nutritional quality and lifelong health advantages and risks

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5,6,7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8,9,10,11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases.13,14,15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost

Heterogeneous contributions of change in population distribution of body mass index to change in obesity and underweight NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

From 1985 to 2016, the prevalence of underweight decreased, and that of obesity and severe obesity increased, in most regions, with significant variation in the magnitude of these changes across regions. We investigated how much change in mean body mass index (BMI) explains changes in the prevalence of underweight, obesity, and severe obesity in different regions using data from 2896 population-based studies with 187 million participants. Changes in the prevalence of underweight and total obesity, and to a lesser extent severe obesity, are largely driven by shifts in the distribution of BMI, with smaller contributions from changes in the shape of the distribution. In East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, the underweight tail of the BMI distribution was left behind as the distribution shifted. There is a need for policies that address all forms of malnutrition by making healthy foods accessible and affordable, while restricting unhealthy foods through fiscal and regulatory restrictions

Suplementação com probiótico na dieta e vacinação de surubins híbridos (Pseudoplatystoma reticulatum x P. corruscans)

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências Agrárias, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Aquicultura, Florianópolis, 2013.Foi avaliada a suplementação dietética de W. cibaria sobre a eficácia da imunização de surubins híbridos contra septicemia hemorrágica causada por A. hydrophila. Os tratamentos foram: peixes alimentados com dieta contendo probiótico; peixes vacinados: e peixes vacinados e alimentados com dieta contendo probiótico; e peixes não tratados (controle). Os peixes dos dois tratamentos que receberam probiótico foram alimentados com ração contendo W. cibaria durante 41 dias. No 15º dia do experimento os animais dos que receberiam vacina foram vacinados intraperitonealmente, com posterior reforço oral, o qual durou quatro dias. Uma semana após o reforço, três peixes de cada unidade experimental foram coletados. A alimentação com probiótico influenciou no aumento do número de trombócitos e da concentração de lisozima quando comparados aos surubins que não receberam a bactéria W. cibaria na dieta. Já a vacinação influenciou no aumento do título aglutinante, concentração de lisozima e atividade antimicrobiana quando comparados aos surubins não vacinados. Porém não houve interação entre a alimentação com probióticos e a vacinação em surubins híbridos nos parâmetros analisados <br