Marked reduction in fertility among African women with urogenital infections:A prospective cohort study

<div><p>Background</p><p>There is paucity of data on risk factors for reduced fertility in low-income countries.</p><p>Objective</p><p>To investigate factors associated with fertility among women in rural north eastern Tanzania.</p><p>Subjects and methods</p><p>A cohort of 1248 non-pregnant women was followed with urine pregnancy testing every third month or more regularly if they reported a missed menstrual period. Pregnancy was confirmed with trans-abdominal ultrasound. Information regarding general health, socioeconomic status and obstetric-gynaecological history was collected. Factors associated with conceiving within 180 days were identified using multivariate logistic regression analyses.</p><p>Results</p><p>Among the 1248 women, 736 were followed for 180 days and 209 of these had an ultrasound confirmed pregnancy. During the follow-up period, 169/736 women were diagnosed with urogenital infections, including suspected sexually transmitted or reproductive tract infections, urinary tract infection, and vaginal candidiasis. Urogenital infections were significantly associated with reduced odds of conceiving within 180 days (adjusted OR (AOR) 0.21, 95% CI 0.11–0.36). Being above 30 years of age was also negatively associated with odds of conceiving (AOR 0.45, 95% CI 0.26–0.77). In contrast, women who recently stopped using hormonal contraceptives (AOR 2.86, 95% CI 1.45–5.70) and women with low socioeconomic status (AOR 1.56, 95% CI 1.04–2.33) were significantly more likely to become pregnant within 180 days.</p><p>Conclusion</p><p>Urogenital infection seems to be a major health factor associated with reduced chances of conceiving. Considering the availability of effective treatment options for these diseases, public health authorities should increase awareness of diagnostic tools in settings with limited resources in order to improve fertility.</p></div

Early diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis by threshold tracking and conventional transcranial magnetic stimulation

© 2021 The Authors. European Journal of Neurology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Academy of Neurology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.Background and purpose: Short-interval intracortical inhibition by threshold tracking (T-SICI) has been proposed as a diagnostic tool for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) but has not been compared directly with conventional amplitude measurements (A-SICI). This study compared A-SICI and T-SICI for sensitivity and clinical usefulness as biomarkers for ALS. Methods: In all, 104 consecutive patients referred with suspicion of ALS were prospectively included and were subsequently divided into 62 patients with motor neuron disease (MND) and 42 patient controls (ALS mimics) by clinical follow-up. T-SICI and A-SICI recorded in the first dorsal interosseus muscle (index test) were compared with recordings from 53 age-matched healthy controls. The reference standard was the Awaji criteria. Clinical scorings, conventional nerve conduction studies and electromyography were also performed on the patients. Results: Motor neuron disease patients had significantly reduced T-SICI and A-SICI compared with the healthy and patient control groups, which were similar. Sensitivity and specificity for discriminating MND patients from patient controls were high (areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves 0.762 and 0.810 for T-SICI and A-SICI respectively at 1-3.5 ms). Paradoxically, T-SICI was most reduced in MND patients with the fewest upper motor neuron (UMN) signs (Spearman ρ = 0.565, p = 4.3 × 10-6 ). Conclusions: Amplitude-based measure of cortical inhibition and T-SICI are both sensitive measures for the detection of cortical involvement in MND patients and may help early diagnosis of ALS, with T-SICI most abnormal before UMN signs have developed. The gradation in T-SICI from pathological facilitation in patients with minimal UMN signs to inhibition in those with the most UMN signs may be due to progressive degeneration of the subset of UMNs experiencing facilitation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Mind the gut:Genomic insights to population divergence and gut microbial composition of two marine keystone species

BACKGROUND: Deciphering the mechanisms governing population genetic divergence and local adaptation across heterogeneous environments is a central theme in marine ecology and conservation. While population divergence and ecological adaptive potential are classically viewed at the genetic level, it has recently been argued that their microbiomes may also contribute to population genetic divergence. We explored whether this might be plausible along the well-described environmental gradient of the Baltic Sea in two species of sand lance (Ammodytes tobianus and Hyperoplus lanceolatus). Specifically, we assessed both their population genetic and gut microbial composition variation and investigated not only which environmental parameters correlate with the observed variation, but whether host genome also correlates with microbiome variation. RESULTS: We found a clear genetic structure separating the high-salinity North Sea from the low-salinity Baltic Sea sand lances. The observed genetic divergence was not simply a function of isolation by distance, but correlated with environmental parameters, such as salinity, sea surface temperature, and, in the case of A. tobianus, possibly water microbiota. Furthermore, we detected two distinct genetic groups in Baltic A. tobianus that might represent sympatric spawning types. Investigation of possible drivers of gut microbiome composition variation revealed that host species identity was significantly correlated with the microbial community composition of the gut. A potential influence of host genetic factors on gut microbiome composition was further confirmed by the results of a constrained analysis of principal coordinates. The host genetic component was among the parameters that best explain observed variation in gut microbiome composition. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings have relevance for the population structure of two commercial species but also provide insights into potentially relevant genomic and microbial factors with regards to sand lance adaptation across the North Sea-Baltic Sea environmental gradient. Furthermore, our findings support the hypothesis that host genetics may play a role in regulating the gut microbiome at both the interspecific and intraspecific levels. As sequencing costs continue to drop, we anticipate that future studies that include full genome and microbiome sequencing will be able to explore the full relationship and its potential adaptive implications for these species

Closing gaps for performing a risk assessment on Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat (RTE) foods : activity 3, the comparison of isolates from different compartments along the food chain, and from humans using whole genome sequencing (WGS) analysis

We would like to thank all the persons and institutes that have provided the project with isolates and accompanying information. Without them, this project would not have been possible. Lin Cathrine T. Brandal, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway Julio Vázquez Moreno and Raquel Abad Torreblanca, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Spain Marc Lecuit, Institut Pasteur, France Alexandre Leclercq, Institut Pasteur, France Iva Hristova, National Center of Infectious and Parasitic Diseases, Bulgaria Marija Trkov, National Laboratory of Health, Environment and Food, Slovenia Cecilia Jernberg, Public Health Agency of Sweden, Sweden Ariane Pietzka, Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety, Austria Eelco Franz and Ingrid Friesema, RIVM, The Netherlands Carlo Spanu, University of Sassari Sardinia Ifip, French Institute for Pig and Pork Industry, Maisons-Alfort, France All the NRLs for providing the isolates from the EU baseline study Special thanks to Sylvain Brisse and Alexandra Moura, Institut Pasteur, France, for providing cgMLST data. The authors would also like to thank the EFSA staff members: Maria Teresa da Silva Felicio, Beatriz Guerra, Ernesto Lìebana and Valentina Rizzi as well as the members of the Working Group on Listeria monocytogenes contamination of ready-to-eat foods: Kostas Koutsoumanis, Roland Lindqvist, Moez Sanaa, Panagiotis Skandamis, Niko Speybroek, Johanna Takkinen and Martin Wagner for the support, revisions and suggestions during the development of the present procurement activity and report.Publisher PD