Effect of using mycotoxin-detoxifying agents in dairy cattle feed on natural whey starter biodiversity.

Natural whey cultures (NWC) are undefined multiple-strain bacterial starter communities that can be affected by even small changes along the entire dairy chain. We applied a multidisciplinary approach to investigate how the addition of 2 mycotoxin-detoxifying agents [sodium smectite and lignocellulose-based material (B1); leonardite and betaine (B2)] to cow diets modified the microbiota of the NWC in manufacture of a Grana-like cheese. Microbiological and flow cytometry analyses showed that the content and viability of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and the total whey microbiota were not affected by the detoxifying agents, and Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus helveticus, and Limosilactobacillus fermentum were the dominant taxa. Random amplified polymorphic DNA-PCR fingerprinting and metagenomic analysis highlighted differences in the bacterial community of the NWC and in the relative abundance of Bacteroidetes that increased when B1 and B2 were included in the diet. Two of 6 St. thermophilus biotypes were detected only in control samples; conversely, none of the Lb. helveticus biotypes found in control samples were isolated from B1 and B2. In vitro tests showed that the 2 binders did not significantly affect the development of St. thermophilus, but they stimulated the growth of Lb. helveticus strains recovered only from B1 and B2 NWC. The addition of binders in cow feed can affect the LAB biotypes present in NWC.

The gut microbiome as possible mediator of the beneficial effects of very low calorie ketogenic diet on type 2 diabetes and obesity: a narrative review.

Several studies have shown a strong correlation between the different types of diets and gut microbiota composition on glycemia and weight loss. In this direction, low-carbohydrate and ketogenic diets have gained popularity, despite studies published so far leading to controversial results on subjects with diabetes. In this narrative review, firstly, we aimed to analyze the role of very-low-calorie ketogenic diets (VLCKDs) in type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and obesity management. Secondly, in this context, we focused attention on gut microbiota as a function of VLCKD, particularly in T2DM and obesity treatment. Finally, we reported all this evidence to underline the importance of gut microbiota to exalt new nutritional strategies for "tailor-made" management, treatment, and rehabilitation in subjects with T2DM and obesity, even with diabetic complications. In conclusion, this narrative review outlined the beneficial impact of VLCKD on gut microbiota even in subjects with T2DM and obesity, and, despite inner VLCKD short-duration feature allowing no sound-enough provisions for long-term outcomes, witnessed in favor of the short-term safety of VLCKD in those patients.Level of evidence Level V: Opinions of authorities, based on descriptive studies, narrative reviews, clinical experience, or reports of expert committees.

Neurological injury as a complication of spinal surgery: incidence, risk factors, and prognosis.

STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. OBJECTIVE: To assess the rate, injury site, aetiology and outcomes in elective spinal surgery patients who sustained a spinal cord injury (SCI). SETTING: SCI national centre Toledo, Spain. METHODS: The study sample included patients who sustained an SCI after elective spinal surgery from 2013 to 2017. Oncological patients and patients receiving interventional therapies were excluded. Data collected included: demographics, aetiology, precipitating cause, injury mechanism, injury site, neurological status (AIS), SCIMIII at admission and discharge, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity, dyslipidemia, depression and hospital length of stay. RESULTS: One thousand two hundred and eighty-two patients were admitted in this period of whom 114 met the inclusion criteria with a median (IQR) age of 58 (45-69) years; 46% female. The prevalence of SCI as a complication following spinal surgery in the total number of patients admitted to our centre was 9%. In 43%, the injury was to the dorsal spine with T12 being the most common neurological level of injury (20% of cases following laminectomy secondary to spinal canal stenosis). The most frequent precipitating cause was epidural haematoma (38% of cases). The median (IQR) SCIMIII scores at admission and discharge were (31) points (20-54) and (67) points (34-81), respectively. General AIS at admission were C (35%) and D at discharge (54%). The presence of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity and dyslipidemia adjusted by age was not linked to a higher complication rate. The median (IQR) hospital length of stay was 120 days (60-189). CONCLUSION: In total 8.9% of patients admitted with SCI were the result of elective spinal surgery.

Characterization of airborne viromes in cheese production plants.

AIMS: To characterize airborne virus-like particles isolated from two cheese production plants in order to reveal their complexity in terms of viral communities and microbial genes potentially mobilized by viruses. METHODS AND RESULTS: Airborne virus-like particles have been isolated from Grana Padano and Gorgonzola PDO cheese production plants and ripening cellars. A shotgun metagenomics analysis of the isolated viromes highlighted a high complexity of the viral communities both in terms of viral taxonomy and phage-host associations. Bacterial reads in each of the viromes were confirmed to be abundant and their taxonomy appeared to be associated with the environmental parameters and the technological processes that characterize the sampling area. Antibiotic resistance genes have been identified in each virome thus confirming that phages could be involved in the mobilization of antimicrobial resistances among bacterial populations. Interestingly human viruses were also identified even if the contamination source was not revealed. CONCLUSIONS: The environmental conditions, which are imposed by the technology of the dairy process, seam to shape the viral populations as a consequence of the adaptation of microbial taxa to those environments. The identification of sequences belonging to Legionella pneumophila and to the human papillomavirus, raised some considerations about the safety of cheese-ripening cellars. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: In conclusion, the analysis of the dairy airborne viromes, has revealed a high complexity of the viral communities even if the environments where the samples were collected were confined environments. Metagenomics of airborne viral population could be a promising monitoring tool for the biological characterization of dairy environments.

Effect of Moringa oleifera consumption on diabetic rats.

BACKGROUND: Therapeutic use of leaves of M. oleifera has been evaluated in diabetes because of its possible capacity to decrease blood glucose and lipids concentration after ingestion, as result of the polyphenols content and others compounds. Nevertheless most results have been obtain from leaf extract, therefore this study would use leaf powder as the regular way of consumption of population to know effects over toxicity glucose, triglycerides, cholesterol, corporal weight, and predominant groups of microbiota. METHODS: Powdered leaf was administrated in different doses to know toxicity and genotoxicity using LD50 and micronuclei assay. Hyperglycemia was induced by alloxan on Sprague Dawley rats. Glucose and body weight were measured once a week meanwhile cholesterol and triglycerides were analyzed at the end of the study by commercial kits. Different organs were examined by hematoxylin-eosin technique. Lactic acid bacteria and Enterobacteriaceae were enumerated from stool samples. RESULTS: The tested doses revealed no lethal dose and no significant differences in genotoxicity parameter. The consumption of the leaves showed a hypoglycemic effect (< 250 mg/dL in diabetic M. oleifera treated group), however in corporal weight showed an increased (> 30 g over no M. oleifera treated groups). There was no change in enumeration of lactic acid bacteria (8.4 CFU/g) but there were differences in the predominance of type of lactobacillus and enterobacteria enumeration. CONCLUSIONS: These results help to increase information over the most popular use of M. oleifera and its safety. However there are needed more studies over the hypoglycemic mechanisms and effects over intestinal microbiota.

Primary gastrointestinal aspergillosis 6 months after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation: a case report.

Invasive fungal infections (IFI) represent one of the most aggressive infectious complications among hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) recipients. Aspergillosis is the most frequent cause of IFI in allogeneic HCT (allo-HCT), with most of the cases involving the respiratory tract. Other infrequent and usually more aggressive forms of invasive aspergillosis include hepatic, neurological, and gastrointestinal (GI). We report herein a case of GI aspergillosis diagnosed in a living patient, off all systemic immunosuppression after an allo-HCT, who had undergone a permanent colostomy because of colon carcinoma 35 years before hematological diagnosis.

Systematic review of machine learning methods applied to ecoacoustics and soundscape monitoring.

Soundscape ecology is a promising area that studies landscape patterns based on their acoustic composition. It focuses on the distribution of biotic and abiotic sounds at different frequencies of the landscape acoustic attribute and the relationship of said sounds with ecosystem health metrics and indicators (e.g., species richness, acoustic biodiversity, vectors of structural change, gradients of vegetation cover, landscape connectivity, and temporal and spatial characteristics). To conduct such studies, researchers analyze recordings from Acoustic Recording Units (ARUs). The increasing use of ARUs and their capacity to record hours of audio for months at a time have created a need for automatic processing methods to reduce time consumption, correlate variables implicit in the recordings, extract features, and characterize sound patterns related to landscape attributes. Consequently, traditional machine learning methods have been commonly used to process data on different characteristics of soundscapes, mainly the presence-absence of species. In addition, it has been employed for call segmentation, species identification, and sound source clustering. However, some authors highlight the importance of the new approaches that use unsupervised deep learning methods to improve the results and diversify the assessed attributes. In this paper, we present a systematic review of machine learning methods used in the field of ecoacoustics for data processing. It includes recent trends, such as semi-supervised and unsupervised deep learning methods. Moreover, it maintains the format found in the reviewed papers. First, we describe the ARUs employed in the papers analyzed, their configuration, and the study sites where the datasets were collected. Then, we provide an ecological justification that relates acoustic monitoring to landscape features. Subsequently, we explain the machine learning methods followed to assess various landscape attributes. The results show a trend towards label-free methods that can process the large volumes of data gathered in recent years. Finally, we discuss the need to adopt methods with a machine learning approach in other biological dimensions of landscapes.

A micromorphic model for steel fiber reinforced concrete.

A new formulation to model the mechanical behavior of high performance fiber reinforced cement composites with arbitrarily oriented short fibers is presented. The formulation can be considered as a two scale approach, in which the macroscopic model, at the structural level, takes into account the mesostructural phenomenon associated with the fiber-matrix interface bond/slip process. This phenomenon is contemplated by including, in the macroscopic description, a micromorphic field representing the relative fiber-cement displacement. Then, the theoretical framework, from which the governing equations of the problem are derived, can be assimilated to a specific case of the material multifield theory. The balance equation derived for this model, connecting the micro stresses with the micromorphic forces, has a physical meaning related with the fiber-matrix bond slip mechanism. Differently to previous procedures in the literature, addressed to model fiber reinforced composites, where this equation has been added as an additional independent ingredient of the methodology, in the present approach it arises as a natural result derived from the multifield theory. Every component of the composite is defined with a specific free energy and constitutive relation. The mixture theory is adopted to define the overall free energy of the composite, which is assumed to be homogeneously constituted, in the sense that every infinitesimal volume is occupied by all the components in a proportion given by the corresponding volume fraction. The numerical model is assessed by means of a selected set of experiments that prove the viability of the present approach.

[Impact of the premature discharge on hospital mortality after a stay in an intensive care unit]. / Impacto de las altas no programadas en la mortalidad hospitalaria tras la estancia en una unidad de cuidados intensivos.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the frequency and to evaluate the relationship between premature discharge and post-ICU hospital mortality. DESIGN: A prospective registry was made for patients admitted during six consecutive years, performing a retrospective analysis of the data on the first admission of ICU survivors. SETTING: A 10-bed general ICU in a 540-bed tertiary-care community hospital. PATIENTS: 1,521 patients with an ICU stay longer than 12 hours, discharged alive to wards with known hospital outcome. INTERVENTIONS: None. MAIN VARIABLES: We recorded the patient data, including types of ICU discharge, normal or premature, and studying their relationship with post-ICU hospital mortality. The types of ICU discharge were also evaluated versus ICU readmission rate and post-ICU length of stay. RESULTS: There were 165 patients (10.8%) with premature discharge. Mortality rate was 11.6% (176 patients). The factors related with mortality were withdrawal and limitation of life-sustaining treatments (OR=14.02 [4.6-42.6]), readmissions to ICU (OR=3.46 [1.76-6.78]), premature discharge (OR=2.6 [1.06-4.41]), higher organ failure score on discharge from the ICU (OR=1.16 [1.01-1.32]) and age (OR=1.03 [1.01-1.05]). Readmission rates and post-ICU length of stay were similar among patients with premature and normal discharge (7.3% vs. 8.2%, P=.68 and 16.7±16.7 days vs. 18.7±21.3 days, respectively, P=.162). CONCLUSIONS: Premature discharges appear to be common in our setting and have a significant impact on mortality. Types of ICU discharge do not seem to be related with other outcome variables in the hospital care of critically ill patients.

Carbamoylphosphate synthetase activity is essential for the optimal growth of Streptococcus thermophilus in milk.

AIM: The aim of the study was to study the role of carbon dioxide metabolism in Streptococcus thermophilus through investigation of the phenotype of a carbamoylphosphate synthetase-negative mutant. METHODS AND RESULTS: The effect of carbon dioxide on the nutritional requirements of Strep. thermophilus DSM20617(T) and its derivative, carbamoylphosphate synthetase-negative mutant A17(DeltacarB), was investigated by cultivating the strain in a chemically defined medium under diverse gas compositions and in milk. The results obtained revealed that CO(2) depletion or carB gene inactivation determined the auxotrophy of Strep. thermophilus for l-arginine and uracil. In addition, the parent strain grew faster than the mutant, even when milk was supplemented with uracil or arginine. CONCLUSIONS: Milk growth experiments underlined that carbamoylphosphate synthetase activity was essential for the optimal growth of Strep. thermophilus in milk. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: The study of the carbon dioxide metabolism in Strep. thermophilus revealed new insights with regard to the metabolism of this species, which could be useful for the optimization of dairy fermentation processes.

EUS-guided tissue samples for the diagnosis of patients with a thickened gastric wall and prior negative endoscopic biopsies.

AIM: Evaluate the diagnostic yield of biopsies obtained by EUS guidance in patients with gastric wall thickening and prior negative endoscopic biopsies. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Data collected from October 2008 to January 2016 were analyzed in a retrospective manner. All included patients had undergone at least one endoscopy with a negative biopsy and showed evidence of gastric wall thickening by tomography, confirmed by endoscopy. All patients gave their written informed consent before the procedure. Demographics and baseline characteristics, including age, sex, number of previous endoscopies, and histopathological diagnosis were recorded. Follow-up data were obtained from a review of the electronic medical records. RESULT: In total, 22 patients with previous negative endoscopic biopsies and gastric wall thickening were included. Using EUSFNA/FNB, the diagnosis was made in the first procedure in 19/22 (86.30%) cases, while in 1/22 (4.5%) patients the diagnosis was made in the second EUS-FNA. A total of 18 (81.82%) patients with EUS-FNA were assessed using a standard Echo-tip, while the remaining four (18.18%) patients underwent EUS-FNB and using a ProCore needle. All patients with a final diagnosis of malignancy had a thickened gastric wall with impaired gastric distension and a loss of wall structure determined by EUS. Of patients with a benign final diagnosis, all (n=8) showed a thickened gastric wall by EUS but with preservation of the deep layers. CONCLUSION: EUS-FNA/FNB is necessary in patients with a thickened gastric wall and prior negative biopsy on endoscopy. The procedure is safe and has a good diagnostic.

Hyperhydroxylation: a new strategy for neuronal targeting by venomous marine molluscs.

Venomous marine molluscs belonging to the genus Conus (cone snails) utilize a unique neurochemical strategy to capture their prey. Their venom is composed of a complex mixture of highly modified peptides (conopeptides) that interact with a wide range of neuronal targets. In this chapter, we describe a set of modifications based upon the hydroxylation of polypeptidic chains that are defining within the neurochemical strategy used by cone snails to capture their prey. In particular, we present a differential hydroxylation strategy that affects the neuronal targeting of a new set of a-conotoxins, mini-M conotoxins, conophans, and y-hydroxyconophans. Differential hydroxylation, preferential hydroxylation and hyperhydroxylation have been observed in these conopeptide families as a means of augmenting the venom arsenal used by cone snails for neuronal targeting and prey capture.

Yellow fever vaccine-associated viscerotropic disease and death in Spain.

Yellow fever vaccine-associated viscerotropic disease (YEL-AVD) is a recently described severe adverse event after yellow fever vaccination, and some cases have been reported in different countries [Anonymous. Effects of yellow fever and vaccination. Lancet 2001;358(9296):1907-9]. Herein we describe a YEL-AVD case in a young woman, who died after vaccination with 17D-204 strain. Clinical, serological and immunochemical analysis as well as virus detection, quantification, sequence analysis and cytokine release, were performed. Further investigations on yellow fever vaccine adverse events, and carefully analysis of the immune response elicited are important tasks for the future.