Effect of ruminal plastic bags on haematological and biochemical parameters of sheep and goats

A study was carried out with the objective of determining the haematological and blood biochemical parameters in sheep and goats with plastic bags in the rumen for a period of 42 days. This was to indicate the possible influence of plastic bags in the rumen on blood parameters. 16, one-year old castrate Dorper sheep with a mean body weight of 26.8 kg (± 0.3 kg) and 16 one-year old castrate small East African goats with a mean weight of 24.5 kg (± 0.3 kg) were used for the study. The 16 sheep and 16 goats were divided into 4 groups of 4 animals each (n = 4). Three groups of each species were implanted with 129 g, 258 g and 387 g of plastic bags, respectively, in the rumen through rumenotomy and the fourth group of each species was control on which rumenotomy was done but with no implanting of plastic bags. Blood samples were obtained by jugular venipuncture from all sheep and goats every 2 weeks for analysis. The only haematological parameter that had significant change was platelets, which significantly (p < 0.05) increased in both sheep and goats with plastic bags in the rumen. However, mean values of erythrocytes, packed cell volume, haemoglobin and mean corpuscular volume decreased but not significantly in the sheep and goats with plastic bags in the rumen. The sheep and goats with plastic bags in the rumen had hyponatraemmia, hypochloridaemia and decreased aspartate aminotransferase enzyme activity. The changes observed in haematological and biochemical parameters could be an indication of adverse effects on the production and well-being of sheep and goats that ingest these plastic bags. These finding may be of diagnostic importance in cases of rumen impaction with indigestible foreign bodies, particularly, plastic bags

Clinical manifestations in sheep with plastic bags in the rumen

Sixteen 1-year-old castrate Dorper sheep were used for the study. The animals were divided into four groups of four animals (n = 4). Three groups were implanted with 129 g, 258 g and 387 g of thin plastic bags into the rumen through rumenotomy, while the fourth group was subjected to rumenotomy without implanting plastic bags, and served as control. All the animals were monitored daily for 6 weeks following implantation. Presence of plastic bags in the rumen was characterized by anorexia, severe depression, discomfort, dehydration, firmness and asymmetrical distension of the abdomen, ruminal hypomotility and diarrhoea with intermittent constipation, weight loss, terminal recumbency and death. The severity of these clinical manifestations increased with increased quantities of plastic bags and their duration in the rumen. Sheep implanted with 258 g and 387 g lost 7.8 percent and 14.2 percent of their initial mean body weight, respectively, by the end of 6 weeks. Presence of plastic bags in the rumen could interfere with digestion, with a gradual loss in body weight, productivity and occasional mortality. Plastic bags in the rumen should be considered as a differential diagnosis in sheep presenting the observed clinical signs, especially in urban and periurban areas

Food variety, dietary diversity and perceived hunger among lactating women (0-6 months postpartum) in a low socio-economic area in Nairobi, Kenya

Breastfeeding has profound benefits for the child and has always been the gold standard for infant feeding. It is also an integral part in the physiologic completion of the reproductive cycle of mammals, including humans and the most energetically demanding phase of human reproduction. Therefore, it is important to determine the nutritional status of lactating women and guide them to optimal health since depleting maternal nutrient stores during lactation poses a risk of malnutrition to the mother. This study was conducted among lactating women to assess domestic hunger, food variety and dietary diversity in order to obtain information that can be used in nutrition intervention programs for optimising breast feeding. It was a descriptive cross-sectional survey carried out at Mbagathi District Hospital which is located at the edge of Kibera slum area (Nairobi). Convenience sampling was used in selecting 120 lactating women who volunteered and consented. The hunger scale was used for assessing domestic hunger and a 24 – hr recall (NFCS, 1999) was analysed for food variety and dietary diversity. Perceived hunger corresponded with narrow food variety and dietary diversity. The women had a mean Food Variety Score of 6.6 (±2.0) and Dietary Diversity Score of 4.3 (±1.0). The mean adequacy ratio (excluding niacin) was 0.74. The lowest median nutrient adequacy ratio (NAR) for calcium was (0.41) and folic acid (0.59). The NAR for energy was 0.62. The highest frequency of consumption (100%) was from cereals, tubers/roots, other vegetables and oils/fats. Vitamin A rich vegetables/fruits (6.6%) and dairy products (1.7%) had the lowest frequency of consumption. Overall, 35.8% of households were food secure while 64.2% were either hungry (5 or more positive responses) or at risk of hunger (1-4 positive responses) (36.7% and 27.5% respectively).There seems to be a need for well designed nutrition intervention programs focusing on nutrient intake from culturally acceptable and affordable foods to increase dietary diversity of lactating women in this low socio-economic area, which will eventually improve their nutritional status.http://ajfand.net/am201

What's normal? Oligosaccharide concentrations and profiles in milk produced by healthy women vary geographically.

Background: Human milk is a complex fluid comprised of myriad substances, with one of the most abundant substances being a group of complex carbohydrates referred to as human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs). There has been some evidence that HMO profiles differ in populations, but few studies have rigorously explored this variability.Objectives: We tested the hypothesis that HMO profiles differ in diverse populations of healthy women. Next, we examined relations between HMO and maternal anthropometric and reproductive indexes and indirectly examined whether differences were likely related to genetic or environmental variations.Design: In this cross-sectional, observational study, milk was collected from a total of 410 healthy, breastfeeding women in 11 international cohorts and analyzed for HMOs by using high-performance liquid chromatography.Results: There was an effect of the cohort (P 4 times higher in milk collected in Sweden than in milk collected in rural Gambia (mean ± SEM: 473 ± 55 compared with 103 ± 16 nmol/mL, respectively; P < 0.05), and disialyllacto-N-tetraose (DSLNT) concentrations ranged from 216 ± 14 nmol/mL (in Sweden) to 870 ± 68 nmol/mL (in rural Gambia) (P < 0.05). Maternal age, time postpartum, weight, and body mass index were all correlated with several HMOs, and multiple differences in HMOs [e.g., lacto-N-neotetrose and DSLNT] were shown between ethnically similar (and likely genetically similar) populations who were living in different locations, which suggests that the environment may play a role in regulating the synthesis of HMOs.Conclusions: The results of this study support our hypothesis that normal HMO concentrations and profiles vary geographically, even in healthy women. Targeted genomic analyses are required to determine whether these differences are due at least in part to genetic variation. A careful examination of sociocultural, behavioral, and environmental factors is needed to determine their roles in this regard. This study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT02670278

Institutionalizing the management of sick young infants: Kenya’s experience in revising national guidelines on integrated management of newborn and childhood illnesses

Introduction: In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed guidelines for the management of sick young infants (SYIs) with possible serious bacterial infection (PSBI) where referral is not feasible. The Ponya Mtoto project was designed as an implementation research project to demonstrate how to adopt the WHO PSBI guidelines in the Kenyan context. Ponya Mtoto Project Description: Between October 2017 and June 2021, Ponya Mtoto was implemented in 4 Kenyan counties with higher infant and newborn mortality rates than the national mean. A total of 48 health facilities stratified by level of services were selected as study sites. Implementation Approach: The following activities were done to institutionalize the management of SYIs with PSBI where referral is not feasible in Kenya’s health system: (1) participating in a cocreation workshop and development of a theory of change; (2) revising the national integrated management of newborn and childhood illnesses guidelines to incorporate the management of PSBI where referral is not feasible; (3) improving availability of essential commodities; (4) strengthening provider confidence in the management of SYIs; (5) strengthening awareness about PSBI services for SYIs at the community level; and (6) harmonizing the national integrated management of newborn and childhood illnesses guidelines to address discrepancies in the content on the management of PSBI. In addition, the project focused on strengthening quality of care for SYIs and using implementation research to track progress in achieving project targets and outcomes. Conclusion: Using an implementation research approach to introduce new WHO guidelines on PSBI where referral is not feasible into Kenya’s health care service was critical to fostering engagement of a diverse range of stakeholders, monitoring provider skills and confidence-building, strengthening provision of key commodities for managing SYIs with PSBI, and sustaining community-facility linkages

The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project:Inferring the environmental context of human evolution from eastern African rift lake deposits

Funding for the HSPDP has been provided by ICDP, NSF (grants EAR-1123942, BCS-1241859, and EAR-1338553), NERC (grant NE/K014560/1), DFG priority program SPP 1006, DFG-CRC-806 “Our way to Europe”, the University of Cologne (Germany), the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (grant no. HKBU201912), the Peter Buck Fund for Human Origins Research (Smithsonian), the William H. Donner Foundation, the Ruth and Vernon Taylor Foundation, Whitney and Betty MacMillan, and the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program.The role that climate and environmental history may have played in influencing human evolution has been the focus of considerable interest and controversy among paleoanthropologists for decades. Prior attempts to understand the environmental history side of this equation have centered around the study of outcrop sediments and fossils adjacent to where fossil hominins (ancestors or close relatives of modern humans) are found, or from the study of deep sea drill cores. However, outcrop sediments are often highly weathered and thus are unsuitable for some types of paleoclimatic records, and deep sea core records come from long distances away from the actual fossil and stone tool remains. The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) was developed to address these issues. The project has focused its efforts on the eastern African Rift Valley, where much of the evidence for early hominins has been recovered. We have collected about 2 km of sediment drill core from six basins in Kenya and Ethiopia, in lake deposits immediately adjacent to important fossil hominin and archaeological sites. Collectively these cores cover in time many of the key transitions and critical intervals in human evolutionary history over the last 4 Ma, such as the earliest stone tools, the origin of our own genus Homo, and the earliest anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Here we document the initial field, physical property, and core description results of the 2012–2014 HSPDP coring campaign.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Comparison of Two Approaches for the Metataxonomic Analysis of the Human Milk Microbiome.

Recent work has demonstrated the existence of large inter-individual and inter-population variability in the microbiota of human milk from healthy women living across variable geographical and socio-cultural settings. However, no studies have evaluated the impact that variable sequencing approaches targeting different 16S rRNA variable regions may have on the human milk microbiota profiling results. This hampers our ability to make meaningful comparisons across studies. In this context, the main purpose of the present study was to re-process and re-sequence the microbiome in a large set of human milk samples (n = 412) collected from healthy women living at diverse international sites (Spain, Sweden, Peru, United States, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana and Kenya), by targeting a different 16S rRNA variable region and reaching a larger sequencing depth. Despite some differences between the results obtained from both sequencing approaches were notable (especially regarding alpha and beta diversities and Proteobacteria representation), results indicate that both sequencing approaches revealed a relatively consistent microbiota configurations in the studied cohorts. Our data expand upon the milk microbiota results we previously reported from the INSPIRE cohort and provide, for the first time across globally diverse populations, evidence of the impact that different DNA processing and sequencing approaches have on the microbiota profiles obtained for human milk samples. Overall, our results corroborate some similarities regarding the microbial communities previously reported for the INSPIRE cohort, but some differences were also detected. Understanding the impact of different sequencing approaches on human milk microbiota profiles is essential to enable meaningful comparisons across studies. Clinical Trial Registration: www.clinicaltrials.gov, identifier NCT02670278

Key genetic variants associated with variation of milk oligosaccharides from diverse human populations

Human milk oligosaccharides (HMO), the third most abundant component of human milk, are thought to be important contributors to infant health. Studies have provided evidence that geography, stage of lactation, and Lewis and secretor blood groups are associated with HMO profile. However, little is known about how variation across the genome may influence HMO composition among women in various populations. In this study, we performed genome-wide association analyses of 395 women from 8 countries to identify genetic regions associated with 19 different HMO. Our data support FUT2 as the most significantly associated (P < 4.23-9 to P < 4.5-70) gene with seven HMO and provide evidence of balancing selection for FUT2. Although polymorphisms in FUT3 were also associated with variation in lacto-N-fucopentaose II and difucosyllacto-N-tetrose, we found little evidence of selection on FUT3. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the use of genome-wide association analyses on HMO

Variation in Human Milk Composition Is Related to Differences in Milk and Infant Fecal Microbial Communities.

Previously published data from our group and others demonstrate that human milk oligosaccharide (HMOs), as well as milk and infant fecal microbial profiles, vary by geography. However, little is known about the geographical variation of other milk-borne factors, such as lactose and protein, as well as the associations among these factors and microbial community structures in milk and infant feces. Here, we characterized and contrasted concentrations of milk-borne lactose, protein, and HMOs, and examined their associations with milk and infant fecal microbiomes in samples collected in 11 geographically diverse sites. Although geographical site was strongly associated with milk and infant fecal microbiomes, both sample types assorted into a smaller number of community state types based on shared microbial profiles. Similar to HMOs, concentrations of lactose and protein also varied by geography. Concentrations of HMOs, lactose, and protein were associated with differences in the microbial community structures of milk and infant feces and in the abundance of specific taxa. Taken together, these data suggest that the composition of human milk, even when produced by relatively healthy women, differs based on geographical boundaries and that concentrations of HMOs, lactose, and protein in milk are related to variation in milk and infant fecal microbial communities

Corrigendum: What's Normal? Microbiomes in Human Milk and Infant Feces Are Related to Each Other but Vary Geographically: The INSPIRE Study

A correction has been made to the Materials and Methods section, subsection Extraction of DNA fromMilk, paragraph 2, The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated