Studies on Calf Diarrhoea in Mozambique: Prevalence of Bacterial Pathogens

The prevalence of diarrhoea in calves was investigated in 8 dairy farms in Mozambique at 4 occasions during 2 consecutive years. A total of 1241 calves up to 6 months of age were reared in the farms, and 63 (5%) of them had signs of diarrhoea. Two farms had an overall higher prevalence (13% and 21%) of diarrhoea. Faecal samples were collected from all diarrhoeal calves (n = 63) and from 330 healthy calves and analysed for Salmonella species, Campylobacter jejuni and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC). Salmonella spp. was isolated in only 2% of all calves. Campylobacter was isolated in 11% of all calves, irrespective of health condition, and was more frequent (25%) in one of the 2 diarrhoeal farms (p = 0.001). 80% of the isolates were identified as C. jejuni. No ETEC strains were detected among the 55 tested strains from diarrhoeal calves, but 22/55 (40%) strains from diarrhoeal calves and 14/88 (16%) strains from healthy calves carried the K99 adhesin (p = 0.001). 6,757 E. coli isolates were typed with a biochemical fingerprinting method (the PhenePlate?) giving the same E. coli diversity in healthy and diarrhoeal calves. Thus it was concluded: i) the overall prevalence of diarrhoea was low, but 2 farms had a higher prevalence that could be due to an outbreak situation, ii) Salmonella did not seem to be associated with diarrhoea, iii) Campylobacter jejuni was common at one of the 2 diarrhoeal farms and iv) ETEC strains were not found, but K99 antigen was more prevalent in E. coli strains from diarrhoeal calves than from healthy, as well as more prevalent in one diarrhoeal farm.     

Finding pathogenicity islands and gene transfer events in genome data

MOTIVATION: There is a growing literature on wavelet theory and wavelet methods showing improvements on more classical techniques, especially in the contexts of smoothing and extraction of fundamental components of signals. G+C patterns occur at different lengths (scales) and, for this reason, G+C plots are usually difficult to interpret. Current methods for genome analysis choose a window size and compute a chi(2) statistics of the average value for each window with respect to the whole genome. RESULTS: Firstly, wavelets are used to smooth G+C profiles to locate characteristic patterns in genome sequences. The method we use is based on performing a chi(2) statistics on the wavelet coefficients of a profile; thus we do not need to choose a fixed window size, in that the smoothing occurs at a set of different scales. Secondly, a wavelet scalogram is used as a measure for sequence profile comparison; this tool is very general and can be applied to other sequence profiles commonly used in genome analysis. We show applications to the analysis of Deinococcus radiodurans chromosome I, of two strains of Helicobacter pylori (26695, J99) and two of Neisseria meningitidis (serogroup B strain MC58 and serogroup A strain Z2491). We report a list of loci that have different G+C content with respect to the nearby regions; the analysis of N. meningitidis serogroup B shows two new large regions with low G+C content that are putative pathogenicity islands. AVAILABILITY: Software and numerical results (profiles, scalograms, high and low frequency components) for all the genome sequences analyzed are available upon request from the authors.     

Advanced age promotes colonic dysfunction and gut‐derived lung infection after stroke

Bacterial infection a leading cause of death among patients with stroke, with elderly patients often presenting with more debilitating outcomes. The findings from our retrospective study, supported by previous clinical reports, showed that increasing age is an early predictor for developing fatal infectious complications after stroke. However, exactly how and why older individuals are more susceptible to infection after stroke remains unclear. Using a mouse model of transient ischaemic stroke, we demonstrate that older mice (>12 months) present with greater spontaneous bacterial lung infections compared to their younger counterparts (7–10 weeks) after stroke. Importantly, we provide evidence that older poststroke mice exhibited elevated intestinal inflammation and disruption in gut barriers critical in maintaining colonic integrity following stroke, including reduced expression of mucin and tight junction proteins. In addition, our data support the notion that the localized pro‐inflammatory microenvironment driven by increased tumour necrosis factor‐α production in the colon of older mice facilitates the translocation and dissemination of orally inoculated bacteria to the lung following stroke onset. Therefore, findings of this study demonstrate that exacerbated dysfunction of the intestinal barrier in advanced age promotes translocation of gut‐derived bacteria and contributes to the increased risk to poststroke bacterial infection.     

A preliminary investigation into the relationship between functional movement screen scores and athletic physical performance in female team sport athletes

There is little research investigating relationships between the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) and athletic performance in female athletes. This study analyzed the relationships between FMS (deep squat; hurdle step [HS]; in-line lunge [ILL]; shoulder mobility; active straight-leg raise [ASLR]; trunk stability push-up; rotary stability) scores, and performance tests (bilateral and unilateral sit-and-reach [flexibility]; 20-m sprint [linear speed]; 505 with turns from each leg; modified T-test with movement to left and right [change-of-direction speed]; bilateral and unilateral vertical and standing broad jumps; lateral jumps [leg power]). Nine healthy female recreational team sport athletes (age = 22.67 ± 5.12 years; height = 1.66 ± 0.05 m; body mass = 64.22 ± 4.44 kilograms) were screened in the FMS and completed the afore-mentioned tests. Percentage between-leg differences in unilateral sit-and-reach, 505 turns and the jumps, and difference between the T-test conditions, were also calculated. Spearman''s correlations (p ≤ 0.05) examined relationships between the FMS and performance tests. Stepwise multiple regressions (p ≤ 0.05) were conducted for the performance tests to determine FMS predictors. Unilateral sit-and-reach positive correlated with the left-leg ASLR (r = 0.704-0.725). However, higher-scoring HS, ILL, and ASLR related to poorer 505 and T-test performance (r = 0.722-0.829). A higher-scored left-leg ASLR related to a poorer unilateral vertical and standing broad jump, which were the only significant relationships for jump performance. Predictive data tended to confirm the correlations. The results suggest limitations in using the FMS to identify movement deficiencies that could negatively impact athletic performance in female team sport athletes.     

Cycling Promotion and Non-Communicable Disease Prevention: Health Impact Assessment and Economic Evaluation of Cycling to Work or School in Florence

Objective

To estimate the effects of cycling promotion on major non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and costs from the public healthcare payer’s perspective.

Design

Health impact assessment and economic evaluation using a dynamic model over a ten-year period and according to two cycling promotion scenarios.

Setting

Cycling to work or school in Florence, Italy.

Population

All individuals aged 15 and older commuting to work or school in Florence.

Main outcome measures

The primary outcome measures were changes in NCD incidence and healthcare direct costs for the Tuscany Regional Health Service (SST) due to increased cycling. The secondary outcome was change in road traffic accidents.

Results

Increasing cycling modal share in Florence from 7.5% to about 17% (Scenario 1) or 27% (Scenario 2) could decrease the incidence of type 2 diabetes by 1.2% or 2.5%, and the incidence of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and stroke by 0.6% or 1.2%. Within 10 years, the number of cases that can be prevented is 280 or 549 for type 2 diabetes, 51 or 100 for AMI, and 51 or 99 for stroke in Scenario 1 or Scenario 2, respectively. Average annual discounted savings for the SST are estimated to amount to €400,804 or €771,201 in Scenario 1 or Scenario 2, respectively. In Florence, due to the high use of vulnerable motorized vehicles (such as scooters, mopeds, and motorcycles), road traffic accidents are expected to decline in both our scenarios. Sensitivity analyses showed that health benefits and savings for the SST are substantial, the most sensitive parameters being the relative risk estimates of NCDs and active commuting.

Conclusions

Effective policies and programs to promote a modal shift towards cycling among students and workers in Florence will contribute to reducing the NCD burden and helping long-term economic sustainability of the SST.     

Detecting protein dissimilarities in multiple alignments using Bayesian variable selection

MOTIVATION: We present an application of Bayesian variable selection to the novel detection of sequence elements that confer negative design to protein structure and function. As an illustration, we analyze the different dimer interfaces between the CXCL8 chemokine family with the CCL4 and CCL2 chemokine families to discover the changes that disfavor CXCL8 of quaternary structure. RESULTS: In comparison with known experimental results, our method identifies evolutionarily conserved sequence changes in the CC families that inhibit CXCL8 quaternary structure. Therefore, we find positive selection of negative design elements. Furthermore, our approach predicts that a two-residue deletion conserved in the CCL4 chemokine family disfavors CXCL8 dimerization. AVAILABILITY: The Matlab code for the Bayesian variable selection is freely available at http://stat.tamu.edu/~mvannucci/webpages/codes.html     

Wavelet thresholding with bayesian false discovery rate control

The false discovery rate (FDR) procedure has become a popular method for handling multiplicity in high-dimensional data. The definition of FDR has a natural Bayesian interpretation; it is the expected proportion of null hypotheses mistakenly rejected given a measure of evidence for their truth. In this article, we propose controlling the positive FDR using a Bayesian approach where the rejection rule is based on the posterior probabilities of the null hypotheses. Correspondence between Bayesian and frequentist measures of evidence in hypothesis testing has been studied in several contexts. Here we extend the comparison to multiple testing with control of the FDR and illustrate the procedure with an application to wavelet thresholding. The problem consists of recovering signal from noisy measurements. This involves extracting wavelet coefficients that result from true signal and can be formulated as a multiple hypotheses-testing problem. We use simulated examples to compare the performance of our approach to the Benjamini and Hochberg (1995, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B57, 289-300) procedure. We also illustrate the method with nuclear magnetic resonance spectral data from human brain.     

Barley aleurone cells contain two types of vacuoles. Characterization Of lytic organelles by use of fluorescent probes

Light microscopy was used to study the structure and function of vacuoles in living protoplasts of barley (Hordeum vulgare cv Himalaya) aleurone. Light microscopy showed that aleurone protoplasts contain two distinct types of vacuole: the protein storage vacuole and a lysosome-like organelle, which we have called the secondary vacuole. Fluorescence microscopy using pH-sensitive fluorescent probes and a fluorogenic substrate for cysteine proteases showed that both protein storage vacuoles and secondary vacuoles are acidic, lytic organelles. Ratio imaging showed that the pH of secondary vacuoles was lower in aleurone protoplasts incubated in gibberellic acid than in those incubated in abscisic acid. Uptake of fluorescent probes into intact, isolated protein storage vacuoles and secondary vacuoles required ATP and occurred via at least two types of vanadate-sensitive, ATP-dependent tonoplast transporters. One transporter catalyzed the accumulation of glutathione-conjugated probes, and another transported probes not conjugated to glutathione.     

Analysis of normal-tumour tissue interaction in tumours: prediction of prostate cancer features from the molecular profile of adjacent normal cells

Statistical modelling, in combination with genome-wide expression profiling techniques, has demonstrated that the molecular state of the tumour is sufficient to infer its pathological state. These studies have been extremely important in diagnostics and have contributed to improving our understanding of tumour biology. However, their importance in in-depth understanding of cancer patho-physiology may be limited since they do not explicitly take into consideration the fundamental role of the tissue microenvironment in specifying tumour physiology. Because of the importance of normal cells in shaping the tissue microenvironment we formulate the hypothesis that molecular components of the profile of normal epithelial cells adjacent the tumour are predictive of tumour physiology. We addressed this hypothesis by developing statistical models that link gene expression profiles representing the molecular state of adjacent normal epithelial cells to tumour features in prostate cancer. Furthermore, network analysis showed that predictive genes are linked to the activity of important secreted factors, which have the potential to influence tumor biology, such as IL1, IGF1, PDGF BB, AGT, and TGFβ.