Wedelia (Sphagneticola trilobata) - daisy invader of the Pacific Islands: the worst weed in the Pacific?

Can a pretty daisy be compared with the likes of the Anopheles mosquito, the dreaded malaria vector; the brown tree snake that has brought birds and lizards in Guam to extinction; or fire ants that threaten endemic lizards and cause blindness in dogs in New Caledonia? I think so. “Wedelia”, creeping oxeye, or the trailing daisy, formerly known as Wedelia trilobata, but now as Sphagneticola trilobata, a deceptively beautiful, bright emerald-green creeper with bright yellow daisy-like flowers, is one of the world’s most aggressive weeds and listed among the worlds 1000 worst invasive alien species. Native to tropical America from Mexico to Brazil and throughout the Caribbean, wedelia is now cultivated, firmly established and has escaped from cultivation throughout the tropics and subtropics and in most of the main islands of Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. Wedelia is out-of-control on the atolls of Kiribati, Tuvalu, Tokelau and the Tuamotus and the limestone island of Niue; and has rampantly spread into grazing areas, national parks, conservation areas, sensitive offshore islands, mangroves, swamps, towns, villages, and along rivers, coastlines and roads in Fiji, Palau, Pohnpei, Tahiti, New Caledonia and Papua New Guinea. Most attempts to control or eradicate it have failed, some at considerable cost. It is suggested that wedelia should be immediately declared a serious noxious weed, should be restricted from introduction into new islands and habitats, and, where possible, eradicated from islands, habitats where it is yet to gain a firm foothold. If action is taken NOW, islands and communities throughout the Pacific can prevent the spread of Wedelia BEFORE it replaces extensive areas of indigenous, where it out-competes plants of considerable ecological and cultural importance. This conclusion is based on my studies of Wedelia over the past 30 years in most of the countries and territories of the Pacific

Supplementary files: Multimodal intervention for pain in HIV/AIDS: depression predicts a remarkably high loss to follow-up

<b>DESCRIPTION</b><div><b><br></b></div><div>This repository contains supplementary files for the HIV Pain Intervention Project (HIP). These files include: </div><div><br></div><div>- The study protocol (protocol.pdf)</div><div>- The data cleaning and data analysis R/RMarkdown scripts (<i>scripts subdirectory</i>) </div><div>- The outputs of the RMarkdown scripts (<i>outputs subdirectory)</i></div><div><i><br></i></div><div><i><b>Note:</b> Participant consent did not provide for the publication of their data, and hence neither the original nor cleaned data have been made available. However, we do not wish to bar access to the data unnecessarily and we will judge requests to access the data on a case-by-case basis. Examples of potential use cases include independent assessments of our analyses, and secondary data analyses. Please contact Prof Romy Parker ([email protected]), Dr Antonia Wadley ([email protected]), or open an issue on the GitHub repo (https://github.com/kamermanpr/HIP-supplement/issues).</i> </div><div><i><br></i></div><div><i>If your request for access is successful and you wish to reproduce the analyses, we recommend that you save the demographics.xlsx and amalgamated_data.xlsx files we will supply you with into the 'original_data' directory and then run the build.R script located in the root directory of this repo. Doing so, will extract and clean the data from the two Excel files into five R data objects (demographics.rds, bpi.rds, bdi.rds, eq5d.rds, and se6.rds) located in the 'data' directory. These new data files will then be used to render the RMarkdown scripts in the 'scripts' directory, overwriting the *.md files in the 'outputs' directory.<br></i></div><div><b><br></b></div><div><b>BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION</b></div><div><b><br></b></div><div><b>Repository citation </b></div><div>Kamerman P, Madden V, Wadley A, Parker R, Cameron S, Devan D, Jackson K, Reardon C. Supplementary files: Multimodal intervention for pain in HIV/AIDS: depression predicts a remarkably high loss to follow-up. <i>Figshare</i>, 2018. DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.6148394 <b> </b></div><div><b><br></b></div><div><b>Manuscript citation </b></div><div>Parker R, Madden VL, Devan D, Cameron S, Jackson K, Kamerman PR, Reardon C, Wadley A. Supplementary files: Multimodal intervention for pain in HIV/AIDS: depression predicts a remarkably high loss to follow-up.</div><div><b><br></b></div><div><b>Manuscript abstract </b></div><div>Pain continues to affect over half of people living with HIV/AIDS and pharmacological treatment has limited efficacy. However, preliminary evidence supports non-pharmacological interventions. We previously piloted a multimodal intervention in amaXhosa women living with HIV and chronic pain in South Africa. Improvements were seen in all outcomes, in both intervention and control groups. We attempted a multicentre randomised controlled trial with 160 participants to determine whether the piloted multimodal peer-led intervention reduced pain in different populations of both male and female South Africans living with HIV/AIDS. We were unable to assess the efficacy of the intervention due to a 58% loss to follow up (LTFU). Here we describe our experience and the barriers to retention. We also discuss the limitations of traditional solutions aimed at improving feasibility of studies and interventions in this context. We found that sex, education, employment status or income stability were not associated with LTFU. The different sociocultural context in South Africa may warrant a different approach to interventions for pain in HIV compared to resource-rich countries including a concurrent strategy to address barriers to health care service delivery. We found that the one factor associated with LTFU was greater severity of depressive symptoms (p=0.01). We suggest that assessment of pain and depression need to occur simultaneously in those with pain in HIV. In PLWHA and pain who are retained in studies, that participation alone appears sufficient to improve pain and depression. We suggest investigation of the effect of social inclusion on pain and depression. </div