Clinical Characteristics,Etiology and Antimicrobial Susceptibility among Overweight and Obese Individuals with Diarrhea: Observed at a Large Diarrheal Disease Hospital,Bangladesh

Background

The present study aimed to determine the clinical characteristics and etiology of overweight and obese (OO) individuals with diarrhea attending an urban Dhaka Hospital, International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research (icddr,b), Bangladesh.

Methods

Total of 508 under-5 children, 96 individuals of 5–19 years and 1331 of >19 years were identified as OO from the Diarrheal Disease Surveillance System (DDSS) between 1993–2011. Two comparison groups such as well-nourished and malnourished individuals from respective age stratums were selected.

Results

Isolation rate of rotavirus was higher among OO under-5 children compared to malnourished group (46% vs. 28%). Rotavirus infection among OO individuals aged 5–19 years (9% vs. 3%) (9% vs. 3%) and >19 years (6% vs. 4%) (6% vs. 3%) was higher compared to well-nourished and malnourished children. Conversely, Vibrio cholerae was lower among all OO age groups compared to well-nourished and malnourished ones. Shigella (4% vs. 6%) (4% vs. 8%), and Campylobacter (3% vs. 5%) (3% vs. 5%) were lower only among OO in >19 years individuals compared to their counterparts of the same age stratum. Salmonella was similarly isolated in all age strata and nutritional groups. In multinomial logistic regression among under-5 children, significant association was observed only with use of antimicrobials at home [OR-1.97] and duration of hospital stay [OR-0.68]. For individuals aged 5–19 years, use of antimicrobials at home (OR-1.83), some or severe dehydration (OR-3.12), having received intravenous saline (OR-0.46) and rotavirus diarrhea (OR-2.96) were found to be associated with OO respectively. Moreover, significant associations were also found for duration of diarrhea before coming to hospital (>24 hours) (OR-1.24), Shigella (OR-0.46), and Campylobacter (OR-0.58) among >19 years OO individuals along with other associated co-variates in 5–19 years group (all p<0.05).

Conclusion and significance

Higher proportion of OO were infected with rotavirus and a greater proportion of them used antimicrobials before coming to the hospital.     

Common Oncogenic Mutations Are Infrequent in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma of Asian Origin

Objectives

The frequency of common oncogenic mutations and TP53 was determined in Asian oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC).

Materials and Methods

The OncoCarta^™ panel v1.0 assay was used to characterize oncogenic mutations. In addition, exons 4-11 of the TP53 gene were sequenced. Statistical analyses were conducted to identify associations between mutations and selected clinico-pathological characteristics and risk habits.

Results

Oncogenic mutations were detected in PIK3CA (5.7%) and HRAS (2.4%). Mutations in TP53 were observed in 27.7% (31/112) of the OSCC specimens. Oncogenic mutations were found more frequently in non-smokers (p = 0.049) and TP53 truncating mutations were more common in patients with no risk habits (p = 0.019). Patients with mutations had worse overall survival compared to those with absence of mutations; and patients who harbored DNA binding domain (DBD) and L2/L3/LSH mutations showed a worse survival probability compared to those patients with wild type TP53. The majority of the oncogenic and TP53 mutations were G:C > A:T and A:T > G:C base transitions, regardless of the different risk habits.

Conclusion

Hotspot oncogenic mutations which are frequently present in common solid tumors are exceedingly rare in OSCC. Despite differences in risk habit exposure, the mutation frequency of PIK3CA and HRAS in Asian OSCC were similar to that reported in OSCC among Caucasians, whereas TP53 mutations rates were significantly lower. The lack of actionable hotspot mutations argue strongly for the need to comprehensively characterize gene mutations associated with OSCC for the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic tools.     

A bedr way of genomic interval processing

Background

Next-generation sequencing is making it critical to robustly and rapidly handle genomic ranges within standard pipelines. Standard use-cases include annotating sequence ranges with gene or other genomic annotation, merging multiple experiments together and subsequently quantifying and visualizing the overlap. The most widely-used tools for these tasks work at the command-line (e.g. BEDTools) and the small number of available R packages are either slow or have distinct semantics and features from command-line interfaces.

Results

To provide a robust R-based interface to standard command-line tools for genomic coordinate manipulation, we created bedr. This open-source R package can use either BEDTools or BEDOPS as a back-end and performs data-manipulation extremely quickly, creating R data structures that can be readily interfaced with existing computational pipelines. It includes data-visualization capabilities and a number of data-access functions that interface with standard databases like UCSC and COSMIC.

Conclusions

bedr package provides an open source solution to enable genomic interval data manipulation and restructuring in R programming language which is commonly used in bioinformatics, and therefore would be useful to bioinformaticians and genomic researchers.

     

Visceral Adipose MicroRNA 223 Is Upregulated in Human and Murine Obesity and Modulates the Inflammatory Phenotype of Macrophages

Obesity in humans and mice is typified by an activated macrophage phenotype in the visceral adipose tissue (VAT) leading to increased macrophage-mediated inflammation. microRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in regulating inflammatory pathways in macrophages, and in this study we compared miRNA expression in the VAT of insulin resistant morbidly obese humans to a non-obese cohort with normal glucose tolerance. miR-223-3p was found to be significantly upregulated in the whole omental tissue RNA of 12 human subjects, as were 8 additional miRNAs. We then confirmed that miR-223 upregulation was specific to the stromal vascular cells of human VAT, and found that miR-223 levels were unchanged in adipocytes and circulating monocytes of the non-obese and obese. miR-223 ablation increased basal / unstimulated TLR4 and STAT3 expression and LPS-stimulated TLR4, STAT3, and NOS2 expression in primary macrophages. Conversely, miR-223 mimics decreased TLR4 expression in primary macrophage, at the same time it negatively regulated FBXW7 expression, a well described suppressor of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) signaling. We concluded that the abundance of miR-223 in macrophages significantly modulates macrophage phenotype / activation state and response to stimuli via effects on the TLR4/FBXW7 axis.     

Thermophilic (55°C) and moderately hyperthermophilic (65°C) fermentation of poultry manure triggers release of high heavy metal concentrations leading to enhanced genotoxicity

Proper disposal of waste from poultry industries may be done by thermophilic anaerobic digestion. Particularly, thermophilic fermentation exhibits pivotal advantages. However, not only the accrued waste material (digestate) serves as organic fertilizer but also poses environmental problems when the pollutant release is poorly synchronized with the environmental demand. To minimize environmental risks, additional hyperthermophilic (moderately hyperthermophilic) treatment of animal by‐products is necessary, but concurrent release of pollutants is notably increased. To estimate the quantity and quality of pollutants released, we analyzed various organic compounds as well as 21 metals and tested their genotoxic/mutagenic potential by using the Allium cepa assay and the Ames test. As, Cd, Ni, and W were not detected or had low concentration (0.01–0.47 mg/kg) and were considered of little relevance. Co, Cr, Ni, Pb, and Mo were detected at concentrations up to 5.76 mg/kg. Fe, Mn, Zn, and Cu had the highest concentrations and were accumulated to inhibitory levels. Phenolic compounds were detected in negligible concentrations. We found that approximately 30% of onion root chromosomes were permanently damaged by high heavy metal concentrations released from the digestates. Higher temperatures and longer fermentation times fostered an increased release of pollutants above permissible limits.     

Phytase-Producing Potential and Other Functional Attributes of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolates for Prospective Probiotic Applications

Wide variations among multifaceted-health benefitting attributes of probiotics fueled investigations on targeting efficacious probiotics. In the current study, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) isolated from poultry gut, feces of rat, chicken, human infants, and fermented foods were characterized for desired probiotic functional properties including the phytase-producing ability which is one of the wanted characteristics for probiotics for potential applications for upgrading animal nutrition, enhancing feed conversion, and minimizing anti-nutritional properties. Among 62 LAB isolates Weissella kimchii R-3 an isolate from poultry gut exhibited substantial phytase-producing ability (1.77 U/ml) in addition to other functional probiotic characteristics viz. hydrophobicity, autoaggregation, coaggregation with bacterial pathogens, and antimicrobial activity against pathogens. Survival of W. kimchii R-3 cells (in free and calcium alginate encapsulated state) was examined sequentially in simulated gastric and intestinal juices. Encapsulated cells exhibited better survival under simulated gut conditions indicating that encapsulation conferred considerable protection against adverse gut conditions. Furthermore, simulated gastric and intestinal juices with pepsin and pancreatin showed higher survival of cells than the juices without pepsin and pancreatin. W. kimchii R-3 due to its significant functional probiotic attributes may have prospective for commercial applications in human/animal nutrition.