Surveillance strategies for Classical Swine Fever in wild boar – a comprehensive evaluation study to ensure powerful surveillance

Surveillance of Classical Swine Fever (CSF) should not only focus on livestock, but must also include wild boar. To prevent disease transmission into commercial pig herds, it is therefore vital to have knowledge about the disease status in wild boar. In the present study, we performed a comprehensive evaluation of alternative surveillance strategies for Classical Swine Fever (CSF) in wild boar and compared them with the currently implemented conventional approach. The evaluation protocol was designed using the EVA tool, a decision support tool to help in the development of an economic and epidemiological evaluation protocol for surveillance. To evaluate the effectiveness of the surveillance strategies, we investigated their sensitivity and timeliness. Acceptability was analysed and finally, the cost-effectiveness of the surveillance strategies was determined. We developed 69 surveillance strategies for comparative evaluation between the existing approach and the novel proposed strategies. Sampling only within sub-adults resulted in a better acceptability and timeliness than the currently implemented strategy. Strategies that were completely based on passive surveillance performance did not achieve the desired detection probability of 95%. In conclusion, the results of the study suggest that risk-based approaches can be an option to design more effective CSF surveillance strategies in wild boar

Beyond traditional surveillance: applying syndromic surveillance to developing settings – opportunities and challenges

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>All countries need effective disease surveillance systems for early detection of outbreaks. The revised International Health Regulations [IHR], which entered into force for all 194 World Health Organization member states in 2007, have expanded traditional infectious disease notification to include surveillance for public health events of potential international importance, even if the causative agent is not yet known. However, there are no clearly established guidelines for how countries should conduct this surveillance, which types of emerging disease syndromes should be reported, nor any means for enforcement.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The commonly established concept of syndromic surveillance in developed regions encompasses the use of pre-diagnostic information in a near real time fashion for further investigation for public health action. Syndromic surveillance is widely used in North America and Europe, and is typically thought of as a highly complex, technology driven automated tool for early detection of outbreaks. Nonetheless, low technology applications of syndromic surveillance are being used worldwide to augment traditional surveillance.</p> <p>Summary</p> <p>In this paper, we review examples of these novel applications in the detection of vector-borne diseases, foodborne illness, and sexually transmitted infections. We hope to demonstrate that syndromic surveillance in its basic version is a feasible and effective tool for surveillance in developing countries and may facilitate compliance with the new IHR guidelines.</p

Diversity of experimentation by farmers engaged in agroecology

International audienceAbstractAgroecology questions the production of generic knowledge. Rather than searching for the best practices for large-scale transfer, it would be more efficient to help farmers find their own solutions. A promising activity for farmers is experimentation because it answers their needs and helps them learn. However, how agroecological practices are tested by farmers in their own experiments is still poorly known. In this study, we examined the short-term experimental activity, i.e., experiments carried out at a yearly scale in pre-defined fields. Seventeen farmers in south eastern France were surveyed. The farmers practiced conventional or organic farming and cultivated either arable or market garden crops. Experiments on agroecological practices were characterized, located along a timeline, and discussed with them. To conduct the interviews with the farmers, each experiment was described in three stages: (1) designing the experiment, (2) managing it in real time, and (3) evaluating the results of the experiment. The data collected in the interviews were first analyzed to build a descriptive framework of farmers’ experiments, after which hierarchical cluster analysis was used to analyze the diversity of the farmers’ experiments. Here, we propose for the first time a generic framework to describe farmers’ experiments at a short time scale based on the consistency between the Design, Management, and Evaluation stages. We used the framework to characterize the diversity of farmers’ experiments and identified four clusters. The originality of this work is both building a descriptive framework resulting from in-depth analyses of farmers’ discourse and using statistical tools to identify and interpret the groups of experiments. Our results provide a better understanding of farmers’ experiments and suggest tools and methods to help them experiment, a major challenge in the promotion of a large-scale agroecological transition

Computing Components of Everyday Stress Responses: Exploring Conceptual Challenges and New Opportunities

Repeated assessments in everyday life enables collecting ecologically valid data on dynamic, within-persons processes. These methods have widespread utility and application and have been extensively used for the study of stressors and stress responses. Enhanced conceptual sophistication of characterizing intraindividual stress responses in everyday life would help advance the field. This article provides a pragmatic overview of approaches, opportunities, and challenges when intensive ambulatory methods are applied to study everyday stress responses in “real time.” We distinguish between three stress-response components (i.e., reactivity, recovery, and pileup) and focus on several fundamental questions: (a) What is the appropriate stress-free resting state (or “baseline”) for an individual in everyday life? (b) How does one index the magnitude of the initial response to a stressor (reactivity)? (c) Following a stressor, how can recovery be identified (e.g., when the stress response has completed)? and (d) Because stressors may not occur in isolation, how can one capture the temporal clustering of stressors and/or stress responses (pileup)? We also present initial ideas on applying this approach to intervention research. Although we focus on stress responses, these issues may inform many other dynamic intraindividual constructs and behaviors (e.g., physical activity, physiological processes, other subjective states) captured in ambulatory assessment

Building a transitional care checklist in rheumatology: A Delphi-like survey.

To design a transitional care checklist to be used by and facilitate the work of health professionals in providing transitional care for children with a chronic rheumatologic disease and their families. A Delphi-like study among an international expert panel was carried out in four steps: (1) a working group of 6 specialists established a draft; (2) a web-survey among a panel of international experts evaluated it; (3) a 2-day consensus conference with an expert panel discussed items not reaching agreement; (4) a web-survey among the panel of international experts with the list of reformulated items. The first draft of the checklist included 38 items in 3 phases of transition and 5 age groups. Thirty-three international experts evaluated the checklist reaching≥80% agreement for 26 items and ≤80% for 12. The consensus conference of 12 experts discussed and redefined the 12 items. Twenty-five international experts filled out the web-survey and all items reached a minimum of 80% agreement except one. The final checklist was reached. This Delphi-like study defined what themes should be included and at what age they need to be addressed with patients with a chronic rheumatology disease and their families during transition. This checklist reached a strong international and interdisciplinary consensus while examining transition in a broad way. It should now be spread widely to health professionals to be used by all those who care for adolescents aged≥12 years at times of transition. It could be transposed to most chronic conditions. Recommendations for further research are given

Evidence for a lack of a direct transcriptional suppression of the iron regulatory peptide hepcidin by hypoxia-inducible factors.

BACKGROUND: Hepcidin is a major regulator of iron metabolism and plays a key role in anemia of chronic disease, reducing intestinal iron uptake and release from body iron stores. Hypoxia and chemical stabilizers of the hypoxia-inducible transcription factor (HIF) have been shown to suppress hepcidin expression. We therefore investigated the role of HIF in hepcidin regulation. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Hepcidin mRNA was down-regulated in hepatoma cells by chemical HIF stabilizers and iron chelators, respectively. In contrast, the response to hypoxia was variable. The decrease in hepcidin mRNA was not reversed by HIF-1alpha or HIF-2alpha knock-down or by depletion of the HIF and iron regulatory protein (IRP) target transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1). However, the response of hepcidin to hypoxia and chemical HIF inducers paralleled the regulation of transferrin receptor 2 (TfR2), one of the genes critical to hepcidin expression. Hepcidin expression was also markedly and rapidly decreased by serum deprivation, independent of transferrin-bound iron, and by the phosphatidylinositol 3 (PI3) kinase inhibitor LY294002, indicating that growth factors are required for hepcidin expression in vitro. Hepcidin promoter constructs mirrored the response of mRNA levels to interleukin-6 and bone morphogenetic proteins, but not consistently to hypoxia or HIF stabilizers, and deletion of the putative HIF binding motifs did not alter the response to different hypoxic stimuli. In mice exposed to carbon monoxide, hypoxia or the chemical HIF inducer N-oxalylglycine, liver hepcidin 1 mRNA was elevated rather than decreased. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Taken together, these data indicate that hepcidin is neither a direct target of HIF, nor indirectly regulated by HIF through induction of TfR1 expression. Hepcidin mRNA expression in vitro is highly sensitive to the presence of serum factors and PI3 kinase inhibition and parallels TfR2 expression

A Phylogenetic Perspective on the Evolution of Mediterranean Teleost Fishes

The Mediterranean Sea is a highly diverse, highly studied, and highly impacted biogeographic region, yet no phylogenetic reconstruction of fish diversity in this area has been published to date. Here, we infer the timing and geographic origins of Mediterranean teleost species diversity using nucleotide sequences collected from GenBank. We assembled a DNA supermatrix composed of four mitochondrial genes (12S ribosomal DNA, 16S ribosomal DNA, cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and cytochrome b) and two nuclear genes (rhodopsin and recombination activating gene I), including 62% of Mediterranean teleost species plus 9 outgroups. Maximum likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic and dating analyses were calibrated using 20 fossil constraints. An additional 124 species were grafted onto the chronogram according to their taxonomic affinity, checking for the effects of taxonomic coverage in subsequent diversification analyses. We then interpreted the time-line of teleost diversification in light of Mediterranean historical biogeography, distinguishing non-endemic natives, endemics and exotic species. Results show that the major Mediterranean orders are of Cretaceous origin, specifically ∼100–80 Mya, and most Perciformes families originated 80–50 Mya. Two important clade origin events were detected. The first at 100–80 Mya, affected native and exotic species, and reflects a global diversification period at a time when the Mediterranean Sea did not yet exist. The second occurred during the last 50 Mya, and is noticeable among endemic and native species, but not among exotic species. This period corresponds to isolation of the Mediterranean from Indo-Pacific waters before the Messinian salinity crisis. The Mediterranean fish fauna illustrates well the assembly of regional faunas through origination and immigration, where dispersal and isolation have shaped the emergence of a biodiversity hotspot