Infectious Disease Transmission by Arline Travel

Improvements in aviation technology have led to considerable growth of domestic and international flights worldwide especially during the past four decades. Commercial flights have increased the movement of and have connected people from virtually all corners of the globe since the end of World War II to exceed 3 billion passengers a year since 2013: a sizable proportion of the global human population. Flight times have decreased considerably from the onset of commercial aviation and the range of airliners has extended substantially. A passenger harboring an infectious agent embarking a flight on one continent can be deplaning on another continent well within half a days’ time, in many cases, before manifesting any symptoms of disease. Furthermore, close proximity of passengers, some perhaps immunocompromised, during extended transcontinental flights, combined with relatively low air humidity (10-20%) and limited air replacements in the pressurized cabin may facilitate exchange of airborne infections. Respiratory pathogens including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, SARS coronavirus, human influenza and parainfluenza viruses and most recently SARS-CoV-2 are most likely candidates to convert aircrafts into atypical, unwitting fomites. Other infectious diseases such as enteric pathogens with an incubation time longer than the duration of any given flight may permit their asymptomatic host to rapidly disseminate an epidemic within or across continents. In this article we review documented precedents, engineering controls on commercial airliners and additional security measures employed on the ground intended to mitigate infectious disease spread and transmission potential through air travel

T6SS intraspecific competition orchestrates Vibrio cholerae genotypic diversity

Vibrio cholerae is a diverse species that inhabits a wide range of environments from copepods in brackish waterto the intestines of humans. In order to remain competitive, V. cholerae uses the versatile type-VI secretion system (T6SS) tosecrete anti-prokaryotic and anti-eukaryotic effectors. In addition to competing with other bacterial species, V. cholerae strainsalso compete with one another. Some strains are able to coexist, and are referred to as belonging to the same compatibility group.Challenged by diverse competitors in various environments, different V. choleare strains secrete different combination of effectors– presumably to best suit their niche. Interestingly, all pandemic V. cholerae strains encode the same three effectors. In additionto the diversity displayed in the encoded effectors, the regulation of V. cholerae also differs between strains. Two main layersof regulation appear to exist. One strategy connects T6SS activity with behavior that is suited to fighting eukaryotic cells, whilethe other is linked with natural competence – the ability of the bacterium to acquire and incorporate extracellular DNA. Thisrelationship between bacterial killing and natural competence is potentially a source of diversification for V. cholerae as it hasbeen shown to incorporate the DNA of cells recently killed through T6SS activity. It is through this process that we hypothesizethe transfer of virulence factors, including T6SS effector modules, to happen. Switching of T6SS effectors has the potential tochange the range of competitors V. cholerae can kill and to newly define which strains V. cholerae can co-exist with, two importantparameters for survival in diverse environments

T6SS intraspecific competition orchestrates Vibrio cholerae genotypic diversity

Vibrio cholerae is a diverse species that inhabits a wide range of environments from copepods in brackish water to the intestines of humans. In order to remain competitive, V. cholerae uses the versatile type-VI secretion system (T6SS) to secrete anti-prokaryotic and anti-eukaryotic effectors. In addition to competing with other bacterial species, V. cholerae strains also compete with one another. Some strains are able to coexist, and are referred to as belonging to the same compatibility group. Challenged by diverse competitors in various environments, different V. choleare strains secrete different combination of effectors - presumably to best suit their niche. Interestingly, all pandemic V. cholerae strains encode the same three effectors. In addition to the diversity displayed in the encoded effectors, the regulation of V. cholerae also differs between strains. Two main layers of regulation appear to exist. One strategy connects T6SS activity with behavior that is suited to fighting eukaryotic cells, while the other is linked with natural competence - the ability of the bacterium to acquire and incorporate extracellular DNA. This relationship between bacterial killing and natural competence is potentially a source of diversification for V. cholerae as it has been shown to incorporate the DNA of cells recently killed through T6SS activity. It is through this process that we hypothesize the transfer of virulence factors, including T6SS effector modules, to happen. Switching of T6SS effectors has the potential to change the range of competitors V. cholerae can kill and to newly define which strains V. cholerae can co-exist with, two important parameters for survival in diverse environments

Altered Food Behavior and Cancer: A Systematic Review of the Literature

: There is evidence of an association between cancer and certain types of altered eating behaviors, including orthorexia, food cravings, and food addiction. Given the growing interest in the topic throughout the scientific community we conducted a systematic review to summarize current evidence on the development of altered food behavior, including food addiction and cancer. The Cochrane Collaboration and the Meta-analysis Of Observational Studies in Epidemiology guidelines were followed to perform this systematic review. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement was used to report the process and results. The structured literature search was conducted on 19 April 2022, on PubMed/Medline and Scopus, combining free-text terms and medical subject headings. A total of seven articles were included once the selection process was completed. Food craving has been associated with different types of cancer in adults and young patients, as well as with orthorexia; conversely, compulsive eating has only been explored in patients with prolactinoma treated with dopamine agonists. This systematic review explored a new area of research that warrants further investigation. More research is required to better understand the relationship between cancer and food behavior

Draft Genome Sequences of 13 Vibrio cholerae Strains from the Rio Grande Delta

Vibrio cholerae is the etiologic agent of cholera, an acute and often fatal diarrheal disease that affects millions globally. We report the draft genome sequences of 13 non-O1/O139 V. cholerae strains isolated from the Rio Grande Delta in Texas. These genomes will aid future analyses of environmental serovars

Comparison between adenosine triphosphate bioluminescence and aerobic colony count to assess surface sanitation in the hospital environment

Background: Adenosine triphosphate bioluminescence produced by the firefly luciferase has been successfullyintroduced to verify cleaning procedures in the food industry according to the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Pointprogram.Our aim was to evaluate the reliability of bioluminescence as a tool to monitor the effectiveness of sanitation in healthcaresettings, in comparison with the microbiological gold standard.Methods: 614 surfaces of various material were randomly sampled in Policlinico University Hospital units in Palermo,Italy, to detect adenosine triphosphate bioluminescence and aerobic colony count. Linear regression model andPearson correlation coefficient were used to estimate the relationship between the two variables of the study.Results: Aerobic colony count median was 1.71 colony forming units/cm2 (interquartile range = 3.8), whereasadenosine triphosphate median was 59.9 relative light units/cm2 (interquartile range = 128.3). Pearson coefficientR2 was 0.09. Sensitivity and specificity of bioluminescence test with respect to microbiology were 46% and 71%,whereas positive predictive value and negative predictive value were 53% and 65%, respectively.Conclusion: According to our results, there seemed to be no linear correlation between aerobic colony countand adenosine triphosphate values, suggesting that current bioluminescence technology has not any proportionalrelationships with culturable microbes contaminating environmental surfaces in health-care settings

The extracellular polysaccharide Pel makes the attachment of P. aeruginosa to surfaces symmetric and short-ranged

Biofilms are surface-mounted, multicellular communities of microbes. Biofilms are often associated with chronic infections that resist treatment, evade the immune system, and damage host tissue. An essential characteristic of the biofilm state is that constituent organisms are bound in a polymeric matrix. This matrix gives the system spatial structure and clusters bacteria near each other, facilitating intercellular interactions. The Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain PAO1 is widely studied as a model biofilm-forming organism. The polymeric matrix of PAO1 biofilms is dominated by two bacteria-produced extracellular polymers, Pel and Psl. We use a combination of optical and atomic force microscopy to examine the roles of these polymers in very early biofilm development. In agreement with other researchers, we find that Psl mediates strong attachment to a glass surface. We find that Pel alone can mediate some attachment, but not as permanent as that mediated by Psl. Unexpectedly, we find that Pel promotes symmetric attachment, in the form of rod-shaped bacteria lying down flat on the surface, and that the presence of Pel makes attachment forces more short-ranged than they are with Psl alone. We suggest that these effects may result from synergistic interactions of Pel with the Psl polymeric matrix

Draft Genome Sequences of 13 Vibrio cholerae Strains from the Rio Grande Delta

Vibrio cholerae is the etiologic agent of cholera, an acute and often fatal diarrheal disease that affects millions globally. We report the draft genome sequences of 13 non-O1/O139 V. cholerae strains isolated from the Rio Grande Delta in Texas. These genomes will aid future analyses of environmental serovars

Type VI secretion system mutations reduced competitive fitness of classical Vibrio cholerae biotype

The gram-negative bacterium Vibrio cholerae is the causative agent of the diarrhoeal disease cholera and is responsible for seven recorded pandemics. Several factors are postulated to have led to the decline of 6th pandemic classical strains and the rise of El Tor biotype V. cholerae, establishing the current 7th pandemic. We investigated the ability of classical V. cholerae of the 2nd and 6th pandemics to engage their type six secretion system (T6SS) in microbial competition against non-pandemic and 7th pandemic strains. We report that classical V. cholerae underwent sequential mutations in T6SS genetic determinants that initially exposed 2nd pandemic strains to microbial attack by non-pandemic strains and subsequently caused 6th pandemic strains to become vulnerable to El Tor biotype V. cholerae intraspecific competition. The chronology of these T6SS-debilitating mutations agrees with the decline of 6th pandemic classical strains and the emergence of 7th pandemic El Tor V. cholerae