Anisakis simplex: dangerous--dead and alive?

The risk of infection with Anisakis simplex and related parasites of fish has been recognized for some time, but it is now emerging that ingestion of material from dead parasites in food is also potentially dangerous. The resulting allergic reactions range from rapid onset and potentially lethal anaphylactic reactions to chronic, debilitating conditions. This review discusses the problems and clinical implications associated with A. simplex, other related conditions, and the way in which disease manifestations vary from person to person.     

The immune status of the population of the Crimea to the tick-borne encephalitis virus]

The immune status of the Crimean population with respect to tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) virus has been studied. The results of the study confirm the existence of natural foci of TBE in the Crimea. The most active and potentially dangerous foci are located in forests of the mountain area of the peninsula. The study has revealed that humans are mainly exposed to the risk of contacting TBE virus infection during their work and rest in the forest.     

Standards for laboratory diagnostics of legionellosis and their application during epidemic outbreak of pneumonia in town Verkhnyaya Pyshma

High effectiveness of application of international standards for legionellosis laboratory diagnostics was confirmed during investigation of pneumonia outbreak in town Verkhnyaya Pyshma. Use of immunochromatographic method and enzyme immunoassay for detection of Legionella antigen in urine of patients allows to confirm diagnosis of Legionella infection during several hours, promptly begin etiologic antibacterial treatment and reveal possible sources of infection in potentially dangerous environmental objects.     

Effect of mild heat stress and mild infection pressure on immune responses to an E. coli infection in chickens

Outdoor or organic farming demands robust chickens that are able to combat common infections before they spread to the flock. Priming the immune system of the chickens early in life with micro-organisms that they will encounter later in life prepares chickens to a life in environments where they are subjected to a more natural level of infection pressure. Also, exposure to non-infectious stressful situations may prepare the immune system to combat infectious challenges. The present study investigated whether the immune system could be primed by applying small doses of infective material to the chicken flock or by exposure to short-term non-infectious stimulation, and whether the effect of those stimuli would depend on the genetic material chosen. The effect of the stimulations was examined on selected immunological variables in two chicken strains, using small amounts of manure and litter from other chickens or short-term heat stress, respectively. After 6 weeks of treatment, all chickens were subjected to an Escherichia coli infection and followed for another 3 weeks. Measures of body weight gain, chicken mannan-binding lectin (cMBL), percentage of CD4+ and MHCII+ lymphocytes, mean fluorescence intensity (m.f.i.) of CD4 on CD4+ cells and MHCII on MHCII+ cells and antibody titres to E. coli were taken. In conclusion, the chickens redistribute lymphocyte populations in peripheral blood in response to potentially infectious agents as well as to stressful non-infectious treatments. Responses to stress situations were dependent on the frequencies of stress exposures and on the chicken breed. This may reflect the superiority of one breed over another in adapting to treatments or in discriminating whether a treatment is harmless or dangerous. However, the differences did not influence the disease resistance to infection with a mixture of E. coli O2, O11 and O78 in the present study.     

Amitriptyline and Imipramine Poisoning in Children

The increasing number of children admitted to this hospital with poisoning by tricyclic antidepressants is causing concern. Of 60 children admitted between January 1966 and July 1973, half were admitted in the last 18 months. In 60% of these patients the tricyclic compounds had been prescribed for nocturnal enuresis. One child aged 2 years and 4 months died of imipramine poisoning. It is imperative that all children with poisoning by tricyclic compounds, irrespective of the dosage, are admitted to hospital for continuous cardiac monitoring. Cardiac arrhythmias induced in children by amitriptyline and imipramine are prominent and dangerous.In the earlier years of this survey the antidepressants taken by children had usually been prescribed for adults, but recently they have been increasingly prescribed as a treatment for enuresis in children themselves. Medicine for a trivial complaint is unlikely to be regarded by parents as potentially dangerous and practitioners should therefore warn them accordingly; if, indeed, the transient effect of these potentially dangerous drugs upon the average case of bed-wetting in childhood can be justified.     

Qualification of serological infectious disease assays for the screening of samples from deceased tissue donors

Whilst some of the assays used for serological screening of post-mortem blood samples from deceased tissue donors in some countries have been specifically validated by the manufacturer for this purpose, a significant number of those currently in use globally have not. Although specificity has previously been considered a problem in the screening of such samples, we believe that ensuring sensitivity is more important. The aim of this study was to validate a broader range of assays for the screening of post-mortem blood samples from deceased tissue donors. Six microplate immunoassays currently in use within National Health Service Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) for the screening of blood, tissue and stem cell donations were included. Representative samples from confirmed positive donors were titrated in screen negative post-mortem samples in parallel with normal pooled negative serum to determine if there was any inhibition with the post-mortem samples. There were no significant differences seen (P < 0.005) between the dilution curves obtained for the positive samples diluted in post-mortem samples and normal pooled sera. Although small numbers of samples were studied, it can be surmised that the post-mortem blood samples from deceased tissue donors, collected according to United Kingdom guidelines, are a suitable substrate for the assays evaluated. No diminution of reactivity was seen when dilution with sera from deceased donors was compared to dilution using pooled serum from live donors. In the absence of genuine low titre positive post-mortem samples, the use of samples spiked with various levels of target material provides a means of qualifying serological screening assays used by NHSBT for the screening of post-mortem blood samples from deceased tissue donors.     

Dangerous prey and daring predators: a review

How foragers balance risks during foraging is a central focus of optimal foraging studies. While diverse theoretical and empirical work has revealed how foragers should and do manage food and safety from predators, little attention has been given to the risks posed by dangerous prey. This is a potentially important oversight because risk of injury can give rise to foraging costs similar to those arising from the risk of predation, and with similar consequences. Here, we synthesize the literature on how foragers manage risks associated with dangerous prey and adapt previous theory to make the first steps towards a framework for future studies. Though rarely documented, it appears that in some systems predators are frequently injured while hunting and risk of injury can be an important foraging cost. Fitness costs of foraging injuries, which can be fatal, likely vary widely but have rarely been studied and should be the subject of future research. Like other types of risk‐taking behaviour, it appears that there is individual variation in the willingness to take risks, which can be driven by social factors, experience and foraging abilities, or differences in body condition. Because of ongoing modifications to natural communities, including changes in prey availability and relative abundance as well as the introduction of potentially dangerous prey to numerous ecosystems, understanding the prevalence and consequences of hunting dangerous prey should be a priority for behavioural ecologists.     

Modern views on the epidemiology of legionellosis: operations procedure during epidemic outbreaks and preventive monitoring

Key aspects of legionellosis epidemiology determining the rising role of Legionella in human infectious diseases in conditions of postindustrial community were discussed. It was shown that formation of Legionella biofilms on potentially dangerous water objects with possible further aerosol or aspiration transmission of microorganisms leads to major epidemic outbreaks and sporadic cases of infection. Main principles of actions during preventive monitoring of Legionella in the environment and epidemic outbreaks of legionellosis were described.     

How safe are microbiology texts ?

Eleven practical microbiology books intended or recommended for schools have been evaluated for safety. A number of the texts are unsatisfactory and suggest techniques and, or organisms which are potentially dangerous. The authors consider that one book should be withdrawn. A code of recommendations to authors and publishers is included and it is suggested that professional societies should monitor future books.     

DNA damage in plant herbarium tissue

Dried plant herbarium specimens are potentially a valuable source of DNA. Efforts to obtain genetic information from this source are often hindered by an inability to obtain amplifiable DNA as herbarium DNA is typically highly degraded. DNA post-mortem damage may not only reduce the number of amplifiable template molecules, but may also lead to the generation of erroneous sequence information. A qualitative and quantitative assessment of DNA post-mortem damage is essential to determine the accuracy of molecular data from herbarium specimens. In this study we present an assessment of DNA damage as miscoding lesions in herbarium specimens using 454-sequencing of amplicons derived from plastid, mitochondrial, and nuclear DNA. In addition, we assess DNA degradation as a result of strand breaks and other types of polymerase non-bypassable damage by quantitative real-time PCR. Comparing four pairs of fresh and herbarium specimens of the same individuals we quantitatively assess post-mortem DNA damage, directly after specimen preparation, as well as after long-term herbarium storage. After specimen preparation we estimate the proportion of gene copy numbers of plastid, mitochondrial, and nuclear DNA to be 2.4-3.8% of fresh control DNA and 1.0-1.3% after long-term herbarium storage, indicating that nearly all DNA damage occurs on specimen preparation. In addition, there is no evidence of preferential degradation of organelle versus nuclear genomes. Increased levels of C→T/G→A transitions were observed in old herbarium plastid DNA, representing 21.8% of observed miscoding lesions. We interpret this type of post-mortem DNA damage-derived modification to have arisen from the hydrolytic deamination of cytosine during long-term herbarium storage. Our results suggest that reliable sequence data can be obtained from herbarium specimens.     

A Sense of Security: Carpentry Apprentices Handling Uncertain and Dangerous Work Tasks

ABSTRACT

This article explores how carpentry apprentices learn to handle uncertain and potentially dangerous situations in the working environment at construction sites. The analysis focuses on how these situations are negotiated at the workplaces in relation to bodily sensations of pain, relations with their co-workers and the importance placed on ‘getting the work done’. It shows that instead of working to eliminate potentially dangerous situations through the use of precautionary measures such as lifting equipment or personal protection gear, the apprentices learn to understand risk and uncertainties as a part of the job through general learning processes at the workplace.     

The Neurological Sequelae of Electrical Injury

Electricity is a potentially very dangerous commodity. Community safeguards, however, result in remarkably efficient control of this hazard. Mortality figures appear to be small and constant. No satisfactory morbidity figures are available with regard to general and neurological complications in non-fatal cases. Study of relevant features of such electrical phenomena as voltage level, resistance factors, current pathway, current diffusion and grounding reveals many difficulties in reconstruction of the sequence of events involved in these injuries. These features underline our frequent inability to understand the mechanisms of initiation of unconsciousness and even of differentiation between death by cardiac arrest and death by respiratory paralysis. Fourteen cases of electrical injury with a variety of neurological complications and sequelae are discussed, and the findings in these cases are compared with those of other observers. An attempt is made to present a comprehensive picture of immediate, secondary and late neurological effects, and to illustrate some of the pathological findings in electrocution material.     

Different Statistical Approaches to Investigate Porcine Muscle Metabolome Profiles to Highlight New Biomarkers for Pork Quality Assessment

The aim of this study was to elucidate the underlying biochemical processes to identify potential key molecules of meat quality traits drip loss, pH of meat 1 h post-mortem (pH1), pH in meat 24 h post-mortem (pH24) and meat color. An untargeted metabolomics approach detected the profiles of 393 annotated and 1,600 unknown metabolites in 97 Duroc × Pietrain pigs. Despite obvious differences regarding the statistical approaches, the four applied methods, namely correlation analysis, principal component analysis, weighted network analysis (WNA) and random forest regression (RFR), revealed mainly concordant results. Our findings lead to the conclusion that meat quality traits pH1, pH24 and color are strongly influenced by processes of post-mortem energy metabolism like glycolysis and pentose phosphate pathway, whereas drip loss is significantly associated with metabolites of lipid metabolism. In case of drip loss, RFR was the most suitable method to identify reliable biomarkers and to predict the phenotype based on metabolites. On the other hand, WNA provides the best parameters to investigate the metabolite interactions and to clarify the complex molecular background of meat quality traits. In summary, it was possible to attain findings on the interaction of meat quality traits and their underlying biochemical processes. The detected key metabolites might be better indicators of meat quality especially of drip loss than the measured phenotype itself and potentially might be used as bio indicators.     

Detection of human papilloma virus in women attending the IRCCS, Ospedale oncologico Bari, Southern Italy: preliminary data

We investigated the diffusion of HPV genotypes using molecular methods. HPV DNA was detected in 30.4% of women examined. The genotype HPV 16 was the most common followed by HPV 31, HPV 51 and HPV 58. Mixed infections were observed in 30.4% of HPV positive women. The 66.7% of the lower age group (< 35 years) was HPV positive. HPV infection was associated with the presence of morphological abnormalities in 13.7% of the women examined. The presence of HPV DNA in women younger than 35 years is an indication for the implementation of sexually transmitted disease education in our area to prevent potentially dangerous infections.     

Evidence that the species barrier of human immunodeficiency virus-1 does not extend to uptake by the blood--brain barrier: comparison of mouse and human brain microvessels

HIV-1 within the CNS produces a neuroAIDS syndrome and may act as a reservoir for reinfection of the peripheral tissues. Study of how HIV-1 crosses the blood-brain barrier (BBB) has been hampered by the lack of nonprimate animal models. However, BBB transport of HIV-1 does not involve any of the known steps conferring species specificity, including binding to CD4 receptors. In vivo and in vitro studies show that HIV-1 and its glycoprotein coat, gp120, are taken up and transported across the BBB of the mouse. Here, we compared the ability of gp120 and HIV-1 to be taken up by isolated brain microvessels (IBM) freshly isolated from mice, from post-mortem human brain, and from mice that had been treated in a manner analogous to the human material (mouse post-mortem). Freshly isolated mouse IBM took up more gp120 and HIV-1 than the human or mouse post-mortem cells. We found no difference between the ability of mouse post-mortem and human IBM to take up either gp120 or HIV-1. Wheatgerm agglutinin has been previously shown to stimulate gp120 and HIV-1 uptake by the BBB; here, it stimulated the uptake of gp120 and of HIV-1 by both mouse post-mortem and human IBM, although stimulated uptake was greatest for fresh mouse IBM. These results show that the mouse can be used to study the initial phases of HIV-1 uptake by the BBB.     

Characterisation of Met-enkephalin(Arg6,Phe7) immunoreactivity in human adrenal and human phaeochromocytoma

The molecular forms of opioid peptides in human adrenal have not been well characterised. These peptides are predominantly derived from the proenkephalin A precursor, which has the sequence of Met-enkephalin(Arg⁶,Phe⁷) as its carboxyl terminus. We have looked in the present study at the subcellular distribution and the molecular form of immunoreactivity to this sequence in post-mortem human adrenal medulla and in phaeochromocytoma. In the human adrenal homogenates, the immunoreactivity distributes on a sucrose gradient in a manner consistent with localisation in chromaffin granules. On chromatography, the immunoreactivity from adrenal medulla is predominantly in the heptapeptide form; the intermediate (3000–4000) molecular weight material is only a minor component of immunoreactivity, in contrast to bovine tissue extracts where this is the major form of immunoreactivity. In the phaeochromocytoma extracts, the heptapeptide sequence again predominates over a minor amount of intermediate sized material. The results are discussed in terms of post-mortem changes, precursor processing and the function of the adrenal medulla.     

Remembrance of things past: modelling the relationship between species' abundances in living communities and death assemblages

Accumulations of dead skeletal material are a valuable archive of past ecological conditions. However, such assemblages are not equivalent to living communities because they mix the remains of multiple generations and are altered by post-mortem processes. The abundance of a species in a death assemblage can be quantitatively modelled by successively integrating the product of an influx time series and a post-mortem loss function (a decay function with a constant half-life). In such a model, temporal mixing increases expected absolute dead abundance relative to average influx as a linear function of half-life and increases variation in absolute dead abundance values as a square-root function of half-life. Because typical abundance distributions of ecological communities are logarithmically distributed, species' differences in preservational half-life would have to be very large to substantially alter species' abundance ranks (i.e. make rare species common or vice-versa). In addition, expected dead abundances increase at a faster rate than their range of variation with increased time averaging, predicting greater consistency in the relative abundance structure of death assemblages than their parent living community.     

Selection of multiresistant coliforms by long-term treatment of hypercholesterolaemia with neomycin.

Patients with hypercholesterolaemia are often treated with the antimicrobial agent neomycin. Such treatment is potentially dangerous, however, as it may favour the emergence of multiresistant, R-factor-carrying, enteric bacteria among the intestinal flora. In 11 out of 14 patients who had received neomycin for three months to eight years most of the faecal coliforms were resistant to at least four antimicrobial drugs and capable of transferring this resistance to others. In contrast, only one out of nine patients who were treated with other lipid-lowering drugs had resistant bacteria in their faeces. Neomycin may cause multiresistant strains to emerge because, like tetracycline, it forms high concentrations in the gut. Long-term treatment of non-infectious conditions like hypercholesterolaemia with neomycin is potentially dangerous not only to the patient but also to the community because of the creation of a reservoir of multiresistant organisms.     

Gene expression differences in bipolar disorder revealed by cDNA array analysis of post-mortem frontal cortex

Previous studies have implicated a number of biochemical pathways in the etiology of bipolar disorder (BD). However, the precise abnormalities underlying this disorder remain to be established. To investigate novel factors that may be important in the pathophysiology of BD, we utilized cDNA expression arrays to examine differences in expression of up to 1200 genes known to be involved in potentially relevant biochemical processes. This investigation was undertaken in post-mortem samples of frontal cortex tissue from patients with BD and matched controls, obtained (n = 10/group) from the Stanley Foundation Neuropathology Consortium. Results include significant (greater than 35% change in signal intensity) differences between BD and controls in a number of genes (n = 24). Selected targets were analyzed by RT-PCR, which confirmed a decrease in transforming growth factor-beta1 (TGF-beta 1), and an increase in both caspase-8 precursor (casp-8) and transducer of erbB2 (Tob) expression in BD. We further observed a significant decrease of TGF-beta 1 mRNA levels in BD by RT-PCR in individual post-mortem samples. Given the neuroprotective role attributed to this inhibitory cytokine, our results suggest that the down-regulation of TGF-beta 1 may lead to various neurotoxic insults potentially involved in the etiology of certain mood disorders.     

A virtual environment for learning to view during aerial movements

Training the gymnasts to view the landing area when learning aerial skills may lead to more consistent landings but can be problematic and potentially dangerous. A virtual environment allowing gymnasts to get introduced to viewing techniques safely is presented. The system is based on existing simulation models and visualisation software, and is implemented using client-server technology to allow reuse with new simulation models in the future.