Palliative Care in the Neonatal Population

In more than 90% of cases of neonate deaths, terminal comfort care was provided in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) (Soni et al., 2011). Palliative care teams are increasing, but not enough organizations have embraced the need for better palliative care guidelines. Nor do many organizations know when, how, or if palliative care should even be introduced. These events lead to comfort care measures being underutilized in the NICU for most newborn infants with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions. Neonatal palliative care is discussed more than in years past, but little research has been dedicated to how early palliative care can improve comfort and quality of life while in the inpatient hospital setting. Keywords you will find throughout this benchmark study are neonatal palliative care, neonatal quality of life, palliative care nursing, parental stress in end-of-life decision-making, provider preferences, and perceptions of palliative care

Erythema ab igne

Photo shows a view of Skyline Arch in Arches National Park, Grand County, Uta

Kin recognition in Drosophila: the importance of ecology and gut microbiota

International audienceThe animal gut commonly contains a large reservoir of symbiotic microbes. Although these microbes have obvious functions in digestion and immune defence, gut microbes can also affect behaviour. Here, we explore whether gut microbiota has a role in kin recognition. We assessed whether relatedness, familiarity and food eaten during development altered copulation investment in three species of Drosophila with diverse ecologies. We found that a monandrous species exhibited true kin recognition, whereas familiarity determined kin recognition in a species living in dense aggregations. Finally, in a food generalist species, food eaten during development masked kin recognition. The effect of food type on copulation duration, in addition to the removal of this effect via antibiotic treatment, suggests the influence of bacteria associated with the gut. Our results provide the first evidence that varied ecologically determined mechanisms of kin recognition occur in Drosophila, and that gut bacteria are likely to have a key role in these mechanisms