Southeast Utah Turfgrass Management Calendar

This is a calendar for turfgrass management for southeast Utah and includes guidelines for seeding, overseeding, sodding, fertilization, mowing, aeration, weed control, and irrigation

St. George, Utah, Turfgrass Management Calendar

This is a calendar for turfgrass management for St. George, Utah, and includes guidelines for seeding, overseeding, sodding, fertilization, mowing, aeration, weed control, and irrigation

A compilation of the laws currently regulating TPA use by optometrists

Optometrists are expanding the scope of primary care optometry by passing legislation to allow them to treat eye diseases with medications. The scope of the laws governing therapeutic use by optometrists in those states where legislation has been passed was determined by soliciting specific information from each of the state boards. Optometrists in all twenty-five states can prescribe topical anti-microbials and anti-histamines. Corticosteriods can be utilized in twenty-one states, and in ten states anti-glaucoma agents may be administered. Oral drugs to treat eye disease can be prescribed by optometrists in eight states

The Potential Impact of Density Dependent Fecundity on the Use of the Faecal Egg Count Reduction Test for Detecting Drug Resistance in Human Hookworms

Current efforts to control human soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections involve the periodic mass treatment of people, particularly children, in all endemic areas, using benzimidazole and imidothiazole drugs. Given the fact that high levels of resistance have developed to these same drugs in roundworms of livestock, there is a need to monitor drug efficacy in human STHs. The faecal egg count reduction test (FECRT), in which faecal egg output is measured pre- and post-drug treatment, is presently under examination by WHO as a means of detecting the emergence of resistance. We have examined the potential impact of density dependent fecundity on FECRT data. Recent evidence with the canine hookworm indicates that the density dependent egg production phenomenon shows dynamic properties in response to drug treatment. This will impact on measurements of drug efficacy, and hence drug resistance. It is likely that the female worms that survive a FECRT drug treatment in some human cases will respond to the relaxation of density dependent constraints on egg production by increasing their egg output significantly compared to their pre-treatment levels. These cases will therefore underestimate drug efficacy in the FECRT. The degree of underestimation will depend on the ability of the worms within particular hosts to increase their egg output, which will in turn depend on the extent to which their egg output is constrained prior to the drug treatment. As worms within different human cases will likely be present at quite different densities prior to a proposed FECRT, there is potential for the effects of this phenomenon on drug efficacy measurements to vary considerably within any group of potential FECRT candidates. Measurement of relative drug efficacy may be improved by attempting to ensure a consistent degree of underestimation in groups of people involved in separate FECRTs. This may be partly achieved by omission of cases with the heaviest infections from a FECRT, as these cases may have the greatest potential to increase their egg output upon removal of density dependent constraints. The potential impact of worm reproductive biology on the utility of the FECRT as a resistance detection tool highlights the need to develop new drug resistance monitoring methods which examine either direct drug effects on isolated worms with in vitro phenotypic assays, or changes in worm genotypes

Synergism between ivermectin and the tyrosine kinase/P-glycoprotein inhibitor crizotinib against Haemonchus contortus larvae in vitro

Anthelmintic resistance is a major problem in parasitic nematodes of livestock worldwide. One means to counter resistance is to use synergists that specifically inhibit resistance mechanisms in order to restore the toxicity, and hence preserve the usefulness, of currently available anthelmintics. P-glycoproteins (P-gps) eliminate a wide variety of structurally unrelated xenobiotics from cells, and have been implicated in anthelmintic resistance. Crizotinib is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor under development as a cancer therapeutic. The compound also inhibits P-gps, and has been shown to reverse multidrug resistance in cancer cells. We were therefore interested in determining if the compound was able to increase the sensitivity of Haemonchus contortus larvae to ivermectin, as measured by in vitro larval development and migration assays with a drug-resistant and a –susceptible isolate. In migration assays, co-administration of crizotinib increased the toxicity of ivermectin to resistant larvae (up to 5.7-fold decrease in ivermectin IC), and rendered the resistant larvae equally or more sensitive to ivermectin than the susceptible isolate. On the other hand, co-administration of crizotinib had no effect on ivermectin sensitivity in the susceptible isolate. In development assays, significant increases in the sensitivity of both the resistant (up to 1.9-fold) and susceptible (up to 1.6-fold) larvae to ivermectin were observed, although the magnitude of the observed synergism was less than seen in migration assays, and the resistant larvae retained significant levels of ivermectin resistance. By highlighting the ability of the P-gp inhibitor crizotinib to increase the sensitivity of H. contortus larvae to ivermectin, this study provides further evidence that P-gp inhibitors are potential tools for modulating the efficacy of anthelmintics. In addition, the differences in the outcomes of the two assays, with ‘resistance-breaking’ effects being much more marked in migration assays, suggest that some life-stage-specific aspects may exist in the interaction of ivermectin with P-gps in the two worm isolates

Southwest Utah Turfgrass Management Calendar

This is a calendar for turfgrass management for southwest Utah and includes guidelines for seeding, overseeding, sodding, fertilization, mowing, aeration, weed control, and irrigation