The use of high throughput DNA sequence analysis to assess the endophytic microbiome of date palm roots grown under different levels of salt stress

Date palms are able to grow under diverse abiotic stress conditions including in saline soils, where microbial communities may be help in the plant’s salinity tolerance. These communities able to produce specific growth promoting substances can enhance date palm growth in a saline environment. However, these communities are poorly defined. In the work reported here, the date palm endophytic bacterial and fungal communities were identified using the pyrosequencing method, and the microbial differential abundance in the root upon exposure to salinity stress was estimated. Approximately 150,061 reads were produced from the analysis of six ribosomal DNA libraries, which were prepared from endophytic microorganisms colonizing date palm root tissues. DNA sequence analysis of these libraries predicted the presence of a variety of bacterial and fungal endophytic species, some known and others unknown. The microbial community compositions of 30% and 8% of the bacterial and fungal species, respectively, were significantly (p ≤ 0.05) altered in response to salinity stress. Differential enrichment analysis showed that microbe diversity indicated by the Chao, Shannon and Simpson indices were slightly reduced, however, the overall microbial community structures were not significantly affected as a consequence of salinity. This may reflect a buffering effect by the host plant on the internal environments that these communities are colonizing. Some of the endophytes identified in this study were strains that were previously isolated from saline and marine environments. This suggests possible interactions with the plant that are favorable to salinity tolerance in date palm. [Int Microbiol 19(3):143-155 (2016)]Keywords: Phoenix dactylifera · endophytes · salt stres

Mapping local patterns of childhood overweight and wasting in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017

A double burden of malnutrition occurs when individuals, household members or communities experience both undernutrition and overweight. Here, we show geospatial estimates of overweight and wasting prevalence among children under 5 years of age in 105 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) from 2000 to 2017 and aggregate these to policy-relevant administrative units. Wasting decreased overall across LMICs between 2000 and 2017, from 8.4% (62.3 (55.1–70.8) million) to 6.4% (58.3 (47.6–70.7) million), but is predicted to remain above the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025. Prevalence of overweight increased from 5.2% (30 (22.8–38.5) million) in 2000 to 6.0% (55.5 (44.8–67.9) million) children aged under 5 years in 2017. Areas most affected by double burden of malnutrition were located in Indonesia, Thailand, southeastern China, Botswana, Cameroon and central Nigeria. Our estimates provide a new perspective to researchers, policy makers and public health agencies in their efforts to address this global childhood syndemic

GWAS meta-analysis of intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy implicates multiple hepatic genes and regulatory elements

Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) is a pregnancy-specific liver disorder affecting 0.5–2% of pregnancies. The majority of cases present in the third trimester with pruritus, elevated serum bile acids and abnormal serum liver tests. ICP is associated with an increased risk of adverse outcomes, including spontaneous preterm birth and stillbirth. Whilst rare mutations affecting hepatobiliary transporters contribute to the aetiology of ICP, the role of common genetic variation in ICP has not been systematically characterised to date. Here, we perform genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and meta-analyses for ICP across three studies including 1138 cases and 153,642 controls. Eleven loci achieve genome-wide significance and have been further investigated and fine-mapped using functional genomics approaches. Our results pinpoint common sequence variation in liver-enriched genes and liver-specific cis-regulatory elements as contributing mechanisms to ICP susceptibility

Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

BACKGROUND Regular, detailed reporting on population health by underlying cause of death is fundamental for public health decision making. Cause-specific estimates of mortality and the subsequent effects on life expectancy worldwide are valuable metrics to gauge progress in reducing mortality rates. These estimates are particularly important following large-scale mortality spikes, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. When systematically analysed, mortality rates and life expectancy allow comparisons of the consequences of causes of death globally and over time, providing a nuanced understanding of the effect of these causes on global populations. METHODS The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 cause-of-death analysis estimated mortality and years of life lost (YLLs) from 288 causes of death by age-sex-location-year in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations for each year from 1990 until 2021. The analysis used 56 604 data sources, including data from vital registration and verbal autopsy as well as surveys, censuses, surveillance systems, and cancer registries, among others. As with previous GBD rounds, cause-specific death rates for most causes were estimated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model-a modelling tool developed for GBD to assess the out-of-sample predictive validity of different statistical models and covariate permutations and combine those results to produce cause-specific mortality estimates-with alternative strategies adapted to model causes with insufficient data, substantial changes in reporting over the study period, or unusual epidemiology. YLLs were computed as the product of the number of deaths for each cause-age-sex-location-year and the standard life expectancy at each age. As part of the modelling process, uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated using the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles from a 1000-draw distribution for each metric. We decomposed life expectancy by cause of death, location, and year to show cause-specific effects on life expectancy from 1990 to 2021. We also used the coefficient of variation and the fraction of population affected by 90% of deaths to highlight concentrations of mortality. Findings are reported in counts and age-standardised rates. Methodological improvements for cause-of-death estimates in GBD 2021 include the expansion of under-5-years age group to include four new age groups, enhanced methods to account for stochastic variation of sparse data, and the inclusion of COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality-which includes excess mortality associated with the pandemic, excluding COVID-19, lower respiratory infections, measles, malaria, and pertussis. For this analysis, 199 new country-years of vital registration cause-of-death data, 5 country-years of surveillance data, 21 country-years of verbal autopsy data, and 94 country-years of other data types were added to those used in previous GBD rounds. FINDINGS The leading causes of age-standardised deaths globally were the same in 2019 as they were in 1990; in descending order, these were, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lower respiratory infections. In 2021, however, COVID-19 replaced stroke as the second-leading age-standardised cause of death, with 94·0 deaths (95% UI 89·2-100·0) per 100 000 population. The COVID-19 pandemic shifted the rankings of the leading five causes, lowering stroke to the third-leading and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to the fourth-leading position. In 2021, the highest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (271·0 deaths [250·1-290·7] per 100 000 population) and Latin America and the Caribbean (195·4 deaths [182·1-211·4] per 100 000 population). The lowest age-standardised death rates from COVID-19 were in the high-income super-region (48·1 deaths [47·4-48·8] per 100 000 population) and southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania (23·2 deaths [16·3-37·2] per 100 000 population). Globally, life expectancy steadily improved between 1990 and 2019 for 18 of the 22 investigated causes. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the positive effect that reductions in deaths from enteric infections, lower respiratory infections, stroke, and neonatal deaths, among others have contributed to improved survival over the study period. However, a net reduction of 1·6 years occurred in global life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, primarily due to increased death rates from COVID-19 and other pandemic-related mortality. Life expectancy was highly variable between super-regions over the study period, with southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania gaining 8·3 years (6·7-9·9) overall, while having the smallest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 (0·4 years). The largest reduction in life expectancy due to COVID-19 occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean (3·6 years). Additionally, 53 of the 288 causes of death were highly concentrated in locations with less than 50% of the global population as of 2021, and these causes of death became progressively more concentrated since 1990, when only 44 causes showed this pattern. The concentration phenomenon is discussed heuristically with respect to enteric and lower respiratory infections, malaria, HIV/AIDS, neonatal disorders, tuberculosis, and measles. INTERPRETATION Long-standing gains in life expectancy and reductions in many of the leading causes of death have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the adverse effects of which were spread unevenly among populations. Despite the pandemic, there has been continued progress in combatting several notable causes of death, leading to improved global life expectancy over the study period. Each of the seven GBD super-regions showed an overall improvement from 1990 and 2021, obscuring the negative effect in the years of the pandemic. Additionally, our findings regarding regional variation in causes of death driving increases in life expectancy hold clear policy utility. Analyses of shifting mortality trends reveal that several causes, once widespread globally, are now increasingly concentrated geographically. These changes in mortality concentration, alongside further investigation of changing risks, interventions, and relevant policy, present an important opportunity to deepen our understanding of mortality-reduction strategies. Examining patterns in mortality concentration might reveal areas where successful public health interventions have been implemented. Translating these successes to locations where certain causes of death remain entrenched can inform policies that work to improve life expectancy for people everywhere. FUNDING Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Deep Learning Using Symmetry, FAST Scores, Shape-Based Filtering and Spatial Mapping Integrated with CNN for Large Scale Image Retrieval

This article presents symmetry of sampling, scoring, scaling, filtering and suppression over deep convolutional neural networks in combination with a novel content-based image retrieval scheme to retrieve highly accurate results. For this, fusion of ResNet generated signatures is performed with the innovative image features. In the first step, symmetric sampling is performed on the images from the neighborhood key points. Thereafter, the rotated sampling patterns and pairwise comparisons are performed, which return image smoothing by applying standard deviation. These values of smoothed intensity are calculated as per local gradients. Box filtering adjusts the results of approximation of Gaussian with standard deviation to the lowest scale and suppressed by non-maximal technique. The resulting feature sets are scaled at various levels with parameterized smoothened images. The principal component analysis (PCA) reduced feature vectors are combined with the ResNet generated feature. Spatial color coordinates are integrated with convolutional neural network (CNN) extracted features to comprehensively represent the color channels. The proposed method is experimentally applied on challenging datasets including Cifar-100 (10), Cifar-10 (10), ALOT (250), Corel-10000 (10), Corel-1000 (10) and Fashion (15). The presented method shows remarkable results on texture datasets ALOT with 250 categories and fashion (15). The proposed method reports significant results on Cifar-10 and Cifar-100 benchmarks. Moreover, outstanding results are obtained for the Corel-1000 dataset in comparison with state-of-the-art methods

Perceptions of health care providers and parents related to benefits and predisposition factors of skin-to-skin contact

Background: Skin-to-skin contact is often termed as “Kangaroo Care”. It is a method of holding a baby skin-to-skin or chest-to-chest with a parent, typically mothers. This nursing intervention helps in establishing a strong bond between a parent and a child, provides adjustment to extra-uterine life, and contributes to the holistic growth and development of the child. Moreover, Kangaroo Care is a key intervention to support the development and nurturing of preterm infants. The study aims to identify the perceptions of healthcare providers pertaining to predisposition factors and the perceived benefits of skin-to-skin contact in times of COVID-19.Methods: A cross-sectional study design was implemented in the study. The data collected from the participants attended the workshop on skin-to-skin from a wide range of health care settings (primary, secondary, and tertiary care hospitals) from Karachi, Pakistan.Results: A total of 126 health care providers participated of which 22.2% were male. Regarding predisposition factors, 112 participants agreed that skin contact enhances a mother’s love for the newborn, while 110 participants agreed that it helps the mother to take better care of the child. Additionally, 109 participants agreed that skin contact establishes an emotional bond between parents and the newborn.Conclusions: Skin-to-skin contact is one of the best and safest practices for the baby and the mother. It reduces mortality, severe illness, infection, and length of hospital stay. The evidence-based research suggests that parents and health care providers should strongly promote and implement the concept of Kangaroo Care/skin-to-skin contact

Ethnic disparities in care and outcomes of non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction:a nationwide cohort study

BACKGROUND: Little is known about ethnic disparities in care and clinical outcomes of patients admitted with non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) in national cohorts from universal healthcare systems derived from Europe. METHODS & RESULTS: We identified 280,588 admissions with NSTEMI in the United Kingdom (UK) Myocardial Infarction National Audit Project (MINAP), 2010-2017, including White patients (n = 258,364) and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) patients (n = 22,194). BAME patients were younger (66 years vs. 73 years, P < 0.001) and more frequently had hypertension (66% vs 54%, P < 0.001), hypercholesterolemia (49% vs 34%, P < 0.001) and diabetes (48% vs 24%, P < 0.001). BAME patients more frequently received invasive coronary angiography (80% vs 68%, P < 0.001), percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) (52% vs 43%, P < 0.001) and coronary artery bypass graft surgery (9% vs 7%, P < 0.001). Following propensity score matching, BAME compared with White patients had similar in-hospital all-cause mortality (OR:0.91, CI: 0.76-1.06, P = 0.23), major bleeding (OR: 0.99, CI: 0.75 - 1.25, P = 0.95), reinfarction (OR: 1.15, CI: 0.84 - 1.46, P = 0.34) and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) (OR:0.94, CI: 0.80-1.07, P = 0.35). CONCLUSION: BAME patients with NSTEMI had higher cardiometabolic risk profiles and were more likely to undergo invasive angiography and revascularization, with similar clinical outcomes as those of their White counterparts. Among the quality indicators assessed, there is no evidence of care disparities among BAME patients presenting with NSTEMI