Guidelines for reporting on animal fecal transplantation (GRAFT) studies: recommendations from a systematic review of murine transplantation protocols

Fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) is a powerful tool used to connect changes in gut microbial composition with a variety of disease states and pathologies. While FMT enables potential causal relationships to be identified, the experimental details reported in preclinical FMT protocols are highly inconsistent and/or incomplete. This limitation reflects a current lack of authoritative guidance on reporting standards that would facilitate replication efforts and ultimately reproducible science. We therefore systematically reviewed all FMT protocols used in mouse models with the goal of formulating recommendations on the reporting of preclinical FMT protocols. Search strategies were applied across three databases (PubMed, EMBASE, and Ovid Medline) until June 30, 2020. Data related to donor attributes, stool collection, processing/storage, recipient preparation, administration, and quality control were extracted. A total of 1753 papers were identified, with 241 identified for data extraction and analysis. Of the papers included, 92.5% reported a positive outcome with FMT intervention. However, the vast majority of studies failed to address core methodological aspects including the use of anaerobic conditions (91.7% of papers lacked information), storage (49.4%), homogenization (33.6%), concentration (31.5%), volume (19.9%) and administration route (5.3%). To address these reporting limitations, we developed theGuidelines for Reporting Animal Fecal Transplant (GRAFT) that guide reporting standards for preclinical FMT. The GRAFT recommendations will enable robust reporting of preclinical FMT design, and facilitate high-quality peer review, improving the rigor and translation of knowledge gained through preclinical FMT studies.Kate R. Secombe, Ghanyah H. Al-Qadami, Courtney B. Subramaniam, Joanne M. Bowen, Jacqui Scott, Ysabella Z.A. Van Sebille ... et a

Proceedings of the IADA Workshop "Word meaning in argumentative dialogue". Homage to Sorin Stati. Milan 2008, 15-17 May.

Editors\u2019 Introduction.The publication of the Proceedings of the I.A.D.A. Workshop 2008 Word Meaning in Argumentative Dialogue aims at contributing in a relevant way to the understanding of lexical phenomena from an interactional and textual point of view. In fact the conference topic covers an important crossing between three research lines at least, first of all dialogue as the specific interest of the Association. Dialogue is meant in a polysemic way for referring to effective interaction analysis but also to its representations in literature and in the media, including polyphony effects in any communicative event, even in written ones. As Luisa Camaiora highlighted in her Foreword to these Proceedings, dialogue is a key-word in our multicultural social context, while \u201cdialogue\u201d analysis as a practice comes out to be more and more meaningful in nowadays professional, public and institutional contexts. Therefore it is also especially meaningful in the context of a modern languages Faculty as ours.The second research line mentioned in the conference title is argumentation. The intersection between dialogue and argumentation selects specific practices of dialogue as a reasonable and shared application of communicative activities. As outlined by the model of critical discussion in recent years, these practices obey to general inferential rules, in spite of relevant context-boundedness. In this perspective, a considerable number of participants developed various aspects of emotional and emotive argumentation. Third and last, the workshop title pointed to word meaning as the specific linguistic structure to be analyzed. This hint has been variously interpreted in the papers, as attention to be devoted to discourse markers, to specific lexical items or to translation aspects. The perspective adopted cannot be but a pragmatic and functionalist one. Nonetheless, each scholar contributed to the conference topic with peculiar methodological and theoretical sensitivity, as is a longstanding tradition in the history of our International Association. That is the cause of great variety and so to say heterogeneity in approach and in focusing. [...]Giovanni GobberSibilla CantariniSara CigadaMaria Cristina Gatti& Silvia Gilardon