Foodborne illness among school children in Ga east, Accra

Background: A food borne illness was reported in Ga- East district of Greater Accra Region among school children in May, 2007 after eating food provided at school. The objective of the investigation was to determine the source, mode of contamination and the causative agent.Methods: A case-control study was conducted, cases were schoolchildren with abdominal symptoms and controls were children of the same sex and class without any symptom during the same period. The school children were selected by systematic sampling. Food handlers and the children were interviewed by a structured questionnaire. Food handlers were physically examined and their stools and blood examined. The kitchen for food preparation was inspected. Risks of food borne infection from the foods eaten were determined using attack rates .Results: The minimum, peak and maximum incubation periods were 2, 11 and 61 hours respectively. The source was rice and groundnut soup (with the highest attack rate difference). Stool and blood samples of food handlers were not infective. Storage facility for food items was poor. No food samples were available for organism isolation. A protocol to prevent such outbreaks was nonexistent.Conclusion: The short incubation period and symptoms presented suggest an infective origin. The storage of the meat may potentially have been the point of contamination. The study showed that the schoolchildren ate contaminated food although the investigation could not determine the causative agent. Protocols to prevent such outbreaks need to be developed for the schools.Keywords: Food borne, illness, contaminated food, school children, Accr

Regeneration and growth in crowns and rhizome fragments of Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) and desiccation as a potential control strategy

Reynoutria japonica (Japanese knotweed) is a problematic invasive plant found in many areas of Europe and North America. Notably, in the UK, the species can cause issues with mortgage acquisition. Control of R. japonica is complicated by its ability to regenerate from small fragments of plant material; however, there remains uncertainty about how much (in terms of mass) rhizome is required for successful regeneration. This study investigated the ability of crowns and rhizomes with different numbers of nodes to regenerate successfully from three sites in the north of England, UK. Two of the sites had been subject to herbicide treatment for two years prior to sampling and the third site had no history of herbicide treatment. No significant differences were observed in regenerated stem diameter, maximum height of stem and maximum growth increments among crowns. All traits measured from the planted crowns were significantly greater than those of the planted rhizome fragments and at least one node was necessary for successful regeneration of rhizomes. The smallest initial fragment weight to regenerate and survive the experiment was 0.5 g. Subjecting all plant material to desiccation for 38 days resulted in no regrowth (emergence or regeneration) after replanting. These findings suggest that desiccation could be a valuable management strategy for small to medium scale infestations common in urban settings

EULAR COVID-19 registry: lessons learnt and future considerations.

Future disease outbreaks of epidemic proportion are inevitable. Advance planning and preparation is essential to mitigate future public health risks; the WHO emphasises the importance of in-depth evaluation of response to and lessons learnt from a national/international pandemic.1 Research is critical to an informed, evidence-based response, therefore establishing pandemic research study protocols, systems to manage and report data, and rapid response teams are considered key to well-prepared, accelerated research in public health emergencies.2 Establishing international data collection registries poses many challenges, which are only amplified in the urgent nature of a global pandemic. The aim of this manuscript is to reflect on the successes and challenges of the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) COVID-19 registry3 to better understand how the rheumatology community (and other disease-specific communities) can be better prepared for rapid response research in the future. In particular, we consider the successes and challenges of the registry, what can be learnt from this experience, and what procedures and resources should be established and strengthened now in preparation for future pandemics

Speciation and fate of copper in sewage treatment works with and without tertiary treatment: The effect of return flows

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2013 Taylor & Francis.The removal of metals from wastewaters is becoming an important issue, with new environmental quality standards putting increased regulatory pressure on operators of sewage treatment works. The use of additional processes (tertiary treatment) following two-stage biological treatment is frequently seen as a way of improving effluent quality for nutrients and suspended solids, and this study investigates the impact of how back washes from these tertiary processes may impact the removal of copper during primary sedimentation. Seven sites were studied, three conventional two-stage biological treatment, and four with tertiary processes. It was apparent that fluxes of copper in traditional return flows made a significant contribution to the load to the primary treatment tanks, and that<1% of this was in the dissolved phase. Where tertiary processes were used, back wash liquors were also returned to the primary tanks. These return flows had an impact on copper removal in the primary tanks, probably due to their aerobic nature. Returning such aerobic back wash flows to the main process stream after primary treatment may therefore be worth consideration. The opportunity to treat consolidated liquor and sludge flows in side-stream processes to remove toxic elements, as they are relatively concentrated, low volume flow streams, should also be evaluated

Geminin Is Required for Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition at Gastrulation

Geminin is a multifunctional protein previously suggested to both maintain the bone morphogenetic protein inhibition required for neural induction and to control cell-cycle progression and cell fate in the early embryo. Since Geminin is required in the blastocyst on E3.5, we employed shRNA to examine its role during postimplantation development. Geminin knockdown inhibited the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) required at gastrulation and neural crest delamination, resulting in anterior-posterior axis and patterning defects, while overexpression promoted EMT at both locations. Geminin was negatively correlated with expression of E-cadherin, which is critically involved in controlling epithelial architecture. In addition, Geminin expression level was correlated with Wnt signaling and expression of the Wnt target gene Axin2 and with Msx2, and negatively correlated with the expression of Bmp4 and Neurog1 in quantitative reverse transcriptase?polymerase chain reaction analysis of RNAs from individual embryos. These results suggest that in addition to patterning the early embryo, Geminin plays a previously unrecognized role in EMT via its ability to affect Wnt signaling and E-cadherin expression.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/98475/1/scd%2E2011%2E0483.pd

Profiling people with Parkinson\u27s disease at risk of cognitive decline: Insights from PPMI and ICICLE-PD data

INTRODUCTION A subset of people with Parkinson\u27s disease (PD) develop dementia faster than others. We aimed to profile PD cognitive subtypes at risk of dementia based on their rate of cognitive decline. METHOD Latent class mixed models stratified subtypes in PPMI (N=770) and ICICLE-PD (N=212) datasets based on their decline in the Montreal Cognitive Assessment over at least four years. Baseline demographic and cognitive data at diagnosis were compared between subtypes to determine their clinical profile. RESULTS Four subtypes were identified: two with stable cognition, one with steady decline, and one with rapid decline. Performance on judgement of line orientation, but not category fluency, was associated with steady decline in the PPMI dataset and deficits in category fluency, but not visuospatial function, was associated with steady decline in the ICICLE-PD dataset. DISCUSSION People with PD susceptible to cognitive decline demonstrate unique clinical profiles at diagnosis, although this differed between cohorts