Phage therapy as a glimmer of hope in the fight against the recurrence or emergence of surgical site bacterial infections.

PURPOSE: Over the last decade, surgery rates have risen alarmingly, and surgical-site infections are expanding these concerns. In spite of advances in infection control practices, surgical infections continue to be a significant cause of death, prolonged hospitalization, and morbidity. As well as the presence of bacterial infections and their antibiotic resistance, biofilm formation is one of the challenges in the treatment of surgical wounds. METHODS: This review article was based on published studies on inpatients and laboratory animals receiving phage therapy for surgical wounds, phage therapy for tissue and bone infections treated with surgery to prevent recurrence, antibiotic-resistant wound infections treated with phage therapy, and biofilm-involved surgical wounds treated with phage therapy which were searched without date restrictions. RESULTS: It has been shown in this review article that phage therapy can be used to treat surgical-site infections in patients and animals, eliminate biofilms at the surgical site, prevent infection recurrence in wounds that have been operated on, and eradicate antibiotic-resistant infections in surgical wounds, including multi-drug resistance (MDR), extensively drug resistance (XDR), and pan-drug resistance (PDR). A cocktail of phages and antibiotics can also reduce surgical-site infections more effectively than phages alone. CONCLUSION: In light of these encouraging results, clinical trials and research with phages will continue in the near future to treat surgical-site infections, biofilm removal, and antibiotic-resistant wounds, all of which could be used to prescribe phages as an alternative to antibiotics.

Modelling impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activities on inflows and sediment loads of wetlands: case study of the Anzali wetland.

Understanding the effects of climate change and anthropogenic activities on the hydrogeomorpholgical parameters in wetlands ecosystems is vital for designing effective environmental protection and control protocols for these natural capitals. This study develops methodological approach to model the streamflow and sediment inputs to wetlands under the combined effects of climate and land use / land cover (LULC) changes using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The precipitation and temperature data from General Circulation Models (GCMs) for different Shared Socio-economic Pathway (SSP) scenarios (i.e., SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5) are downscaled and bias-corrected with Euclidean distance method and quantile delta mapping (QDM) for the case of the Anzali wetland watershed (AWW) in Iran. The Land Change Modeler (LCM) is adopted to project the future LULC at the AWW. The results indicate that the precipitation and air temperature across the AWW will decrease and increase, respectively, under the SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5 scenarios. Streamflow and sediment loads will reduce under the sole influence of SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 climate scenarios. An increase in sediment load and inflow was observed under the combined effects of climate and LULC changes, this is mainly due to the projected increased deforestation and urbanization across the AWW. The findings suggest that the densely vegetated regions, mainly located in the zones with steep slope, significantly prevents large sediment load and high streamflow input to the AWW. Under the combined effects of the climate and LULC changes, by 2100, the projected total sediment input to the wetland will reach 22.66, 20.83, and 19.93 million tons under SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5 scenarios, respectively. The results highlight that without any robust environmental interventions, the large sediment inputs will significantly degrade the Anzali wetland ecosystem and partly-fill the wetland basin, resulting in resigning the wetland from the Montreux record list and the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance.

Developing sustainable land-use patterns at watershed scale using nexus of soil, water, energy, and food.

Aside from the many services that soil provides, it also stores water and makes it available to crops, which is critical for food security. However, the necessity of further studies for overcoming the existing gap in relation to the role of soil in the water, energy, and food nexus system has been preoccupying the experts and specialists around the world for some time. In this sense, the balance between many key ecosystem components based on the Soil, water, energy, and food (SWEF) nexus framework is one of the key characteristics of holistic and accommodative watershed management systems. To the best of our knowledge, the watershed scale is used as a planning unit for the first time in the current study to construct a conceptual model for adaptive management of optimum land-use/cover allocation using SWEF. The method was then used for the Shazand Watershed, Iran. Numerous metrics, such as soil erosion, soil organic carbon (SOC), water and energy use, mass efficiency, and economic efficiency, were investigated. Finally, a compound indicator was used to generate the SWEF nexus index (SWEFNI) for various land-uses/crops for the node year 2014. SWFENI ranged from 0.19 (worst) for rangeland to 0.78 (best) for almond plantations, according to the findings. The study's present approach may be tested worldwide.

Model-based water accounting for integrated assessment of water resources systems at the basin scale.

Agricultural activities in the concept of integrated water resources management play a vital role. Especially in dry and semi-dry regions, agricultural activities have the largest share of water consumption. By employing a model-based approach using modified Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT agro-hydrological model), this study has prepared Water Accounting Plus (WA+) framework requirements to investigate different conditions of supply and demand in wet (1985-2000) and dry (2001-2015) periods in a semi-dry basin (Karkheh River Basin) in Iran. Our assessments based on WA+ show decreasing 10% (21.65 to 19.29 Billion Cubic Meters (BCM)/year) of precipitation in the dry period caused a 4% (0.13 BCM/year) decline in natural evapotranspiration. However, the basin experienced a 24% increment in evapotranspiration from agricultural activities at the same period, and runoff was approximately halved (2.45 BCM/year). Therefore, especially in downstream parts, surface water withdrawal has decreased by 18%. These new conditions have put pressure on groundwater resources. The aquifer extraction and total withdrawal for irrigation have grown by about 17% and 4%, respectively. Finally, it is evident that the manageable water has diminished due to climate change; not only the managed water consumption in the basin has not reduced, but it has also highly risen. The current study results help water authorities arrange new hydrological and climatic conditions strategies.

Effects of dynamic land use/land cover change on water resources and sediment yield in the Anzali wetland catchment, Gilan, Iran.

Land use/land cover (LULC) changes strongly affect catchment hydrology and sediment yields. The current study aims at analyzing the hydrological consequences of dynamic LULC changes in the Anzali wetland catchment, Iran. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT 2012) model was used to assess impacts on evapotranspiration, water yield, and sediment yield. Two model runs were performed using static and dynamic LULC inputs to evaluate the effects of LULC change between 1990 and 2013. For the static model, the LULC map of 1990 was used, whereas for the dynamic model, a gradual change of the LULC distribution was interpolated from 1990, 2000, and 2013 LULC data. The major LULC changes were identified as an increase of agricultural area by 7% of the catchment area and a decrease of forest coverage by 6.8% between 1990 and 2013. At the catchment scale, the differences in the long-term mean annual values for the main water balance components and sediment yield were smaller than 10 mm (<2.8%) and 3 t/km2 (<2.6%), respectively. However, at the sub-basin scale the increase of agricultural land use resulted in an increase of evapotranspiration, water yield, and sediment yield by up to 8.3%, 7%, and 169%, respectively, whereas urban expansion led to a decrease of evapotranspiration, water yield, and sediment yield by up to -3.5%, -2.3%, and -9.4%. According to the results of the monthly time scale analysis, the most significant impact of LULC changes occurs during the dry season months, when the increase of irrigation agriculture results in an increase in water discharge and sediment loads to the Anzali wetland. Overall, the results showed that the implementation of dynamic LULC change into the SWAT model could be adopted as a planning tool to manage LULC change of the Anzali wetland catchment in the future.