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Antibiotic exposures and the development of pediatric autoimmune diseases : a register-based case-control study

Background Antibiotics have been associated with several individual autoimmune diseases (ADs). This study aims to discover whether pre-diagnostic antibiotics are associated with the onset of ADs in general. Methods From a cohort of 11,407 children, 242 developed ADs (type 1 diabetes, autoimmune thyroiditis, juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), or inflammatory bowel diseases) by a median age of 16 years. Antibiotic purchases from birth until the date of diagnosis (or respective date in the matched controls n = 708) were traced from national registers. Results Total number of antibiotic purchases was not related to the onset of ADs when studied as a group. Of specific diagnoses, JIA was associated with the total number of antibiotics throughout the childhood and with broad-spectrum antibiotics before the age of 3 years. Intriguingly, recent and frequent antibiotic use (within 2 years before diagnosis and >= 3 purchases) was associated with the onset of ADs (OR 1.72, 95% CI 1.08-2.74). Regardless of frequent use in childhood (40% of all antibiotics), penicillin group antibiotics were not related to any ADs. Conclusions Use of antibiotics was relatively safe regarding the overall development of ADs. However, broad-spectrum antibiotics should be used considerately as they may associate with an increased likelihood of JIA. Impact Increasing numbers of antibiotic purchases before the age of 3 years or throughout childhood were not associated with the development of pediatric autoimmune diseases. Broad-spectrum antibiotics were related to the development of autoimmune diseases, especially juvenile idiopathic arthritis in children, while penicillin group antibiotics were not. The use of broad-spectrum antibiotics in children should be cautious as they may carry along a risk for autoimmune disease development.Peer reviewe

Influence of feeding crimped kernel maize silage on the course of subclinical necrotic enteritis in a broiler disease model

This experiment was carried out with 375 male broilers (Ross 308) from days 1 to 28 to evaluate the influence of crimped kernel maize silage (CKMS) on the manifestation of subclinical necrotic enteritis, microbiota counts, organic acid production and relative weights of gastrointestinal segments. A necrotic enteritis disease model was applied. Birds were allocated into 3 different dietary treatments: a maize-based feed (MBF, control diet), and 2 diets supplemented with 15% (CKMS15) or 30% (CKMS30) of crimped ensiled kernel maize. The disease model involved a 10-time overdose of an attenuated live vaccine against coccidiosis given orally on day 17, followed by oral inoculation of Clostridium perfringens Type A (S48, 108 to 109 bacteria/bird) twice daily on days 18, 19, 20 and 21. Scoring of intestinal lesions was performed on days 22, 23, 25 and 28. Ileal and caecal digesta samples were collected for the quantification of selected bacterial groups and organic acids. The results showed that there was no effect of dietary treatments on small intestinal lesion scores (P > 0.05). Lesions scores peaked on days 23 and 25 and decreased again on day 28 ( 0.05). Lesions scores peaked on days 23 and 25 and decreased again on day 28 (P = 0.001). No effect of age on microbiota counts was observed, but feeding of CKMS30 reduced the number of coliforms in ileal contents (P = 0.01). Dietary treatments did not affect organic acid concentrations in ileum and caeca, but there was an effect of age; butyric acid was higher on days 22, 23 and 25 than on day 28 (P = 0.04). Acetic acid and propionic acid concentrations in caeca were the highest on days 22 and 28 but the lowest on days 23 and 25. Relative gizzard and caeca weights were increased, and relative ileum weights were decreased when birds were fed CKMS30 (

Microplastic in Surface Waters of Urban Rivers: Concentration, Sources, and Associated Bacterial Assemblages

The ecological dynamics of microplastic (\u3c5 mm) are well documented in marine ecosystems, but the sources, abundance, and ecological role of microplastic in rivers are unknown and likely to be substantial. Microplastic fibers (e.g., synthetic fabrics) and pellets (e.g., abrasives in personal care products) are abundant in wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent, and can serve as a point source of microplastic in rivers. The buoyancy, hydrophobic surface, and long transport distance of microplastic make it a novel substrate for the selection and dispersal of unique microbial assemblages. We measured microplastic concentration and bacterial assemblage composition on microplastic and natural surfaces upstream and downstream of WWTP effluent sites at nine rivers in Illinois, United States. Microplastic concentration was higher downstream of WWTP effluent outfall sites in all but two rivers. Pellets, fibers, and fragments were the dominant microplastic types, and polymers were identified as polypropylene, polyethylene, and polystyrene. Mean microplastic flux was 1,338,757 pieces per day, although the flux was highly variable among nine sites (min = 15,520 per day, max = 4,721,709 per day). High-throughput sequencing of 16S rRNA genes showed bacterial assemblage composition was significantly different among microplastic, seston, and water column substrates. Microplastic bacterial assemblages had lower taxon richness, diversity, and evenness than those on other substrates, and microplastic selected for taxa that may degrade plastic polymers (e.g., Pseudomonas) and those representing common human intestinal pathogens (e.g., Arcobacter). Effluent from WWTPs in rivers is an important component of the global plastic “life cycle,” and microplastic serves as a novel substrate that selects and transports distinct bacterial assemblages in urban rivers. Rates of microplastic deposition, consumption by stream biota, and the metabolic capacity of microplastic biofilms in rivers are unknown and merit further research

Assessing the safety attitudes questionnaire (SAQ), German language version in Swiss university hospitals - A validation study

Background: Improving patient safety has become a major focus of clinical care and research over the past two decades. An institution's patient safety climate represents an essential component of ensuring a safe environment and thereby can be vital to the prevention of adverse events. Covering six patient safety related factors, the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) is a validated and widely used instrument to measure the patient safety climate in clinical areas. The objective of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the German language version of the SAQ. Methods. A survey was carried out in two University Hospitals in Switzerland in autumn 2009 where the SAQ was distributed to a sample of 406 nurses and physicians in medical and surgical wards. Following the American Educational Research Association guidelines, we tested the questionnaire validity by levels of evidence: content validity, internal structure and relations to other variables. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine factor structure. Cronbach's alphas and inter-item correlations were calculated to examine internal consistency reliability. Results: A total of 319 questionnaires were completed representing an overall response rate of 78.6%. For three items, the item content validity index was <0.75. Confirmatory factor analysis showed acceptable model fit (RMSEA = 0.045; CFI = 0.944) for the six-factor model. Additional exploratory factor analysis could not identify a better factor model. SAQ factor scores showed positive correlations with the Safety Organizing Scale (r =.56 -.72). The SAQ German version showed moderate to strong internal consistency reliability indices (Cronbach alpha =.65 -.83). Conclusions: The German language version of the SAQ demonstrated acceptable to good psychometric properties and therefore shows promise to be a sound instrument to measure patient safety climate in Swiss hospital wards. However, the low item content validity and large number of missing responses for several items suggest that improvements and adaptations in translation are required for select items, especially within the perception of management scale. Following these revisions, psychometric properties should reassessed in a randomly selected sample and hospitals and departments prior to use in Swiss hospital settings. © 2013 Zimmermann et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

On the origine of the Boson peak

We show that the phonon-saddle transition in the ensemble of generalized inherent structures (minima and saddles) happens at the same point as the dynamical phase transition in glasses, that has been studied in the framework of the mode coupling approximation. The Boson peak observed in glasses at low temperature is a remanent of this transition.Comment: Proceeding of the Pisa conference September 2002, 13 pages+ 4 figures, To be publiched by Journal of Physic

Logics for Petri nets with propagating failures

Petri nets play a central role in the formal modelling of a wide range of complex systems and scenarios. Their ability to handle with both concurrency and resource awareness justifies their spread in the current formal development practices. On the logic side, Dynamic Logics are widely accepted as the de facto formalisms to reason about computational systems. However, as usual, the application to new situations raises new challenges and issues. The ubiquity of failures in the execution of current systems, interpreted in these models as triggered events that are not followed by the corresponding transition, entails not only the adjustment of these structures to deal with this reality, but also the introduction of new logics adequate to this emerging phenomenon. This paper contributes to this challenge by exploring a combination of two previous works of the authors, namely the Propositional Dynamic Logic for Petri Nets [1] and a parametric construction of multi-valued dynamic logics presented in [13]. This exercise results in a new family of Dynamic Logics for Petri Nets suitable to deal with firing failures.publishe

A comprehensive evaluation of colonic mucosal isolates of Sutterella wadsworthensis from inflammatory bowel disease

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Elevated glutamine/glutamate ratio in cerebrospinal fluid of first episode and drug naive schizophrenic patients

BACKGROUND: Recent magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) studies report that glutamine is altered in the brains of schizophrenic patients. There were also conflicting findings on glutamate in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of schizophrenic patients, and absent for glutamine. This study aims to clarify the question of glutamine and glutamate in CSF of first episode and drug naive schizophrenic patients. METHOD: Levels of glutamine and glutamate in CSF of 25 first episode and drug-naive male schizophrenic patients and 17 age-matched male healthy controls were measured by a high performance liquid chromatography. RESULTS: The ratio (126.1 (median), 117.7 ± 27.4 (mean ± S.D.)) of glutamine to glutamate in the CSF of patients was significantly (z = -3.29, p = 0.001) higher than that (81.01 (median), 89.1 ± 22.5 (mean ± S.D.)) of normal controls although each level of glutamine and glutamate in patients was not different from that of normal controls. CONCLUSION: Our data suggests that a disfunction in glutamate-glutamine cycle in the brain may play a role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia