Tag: pubmed

Vet Parasitol. 2021 Jun 11;296:109500. doi: 10.1016/j.vetpar.2021.109500. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

We investigated the effects of gastrointestinal nematode (GIN) challenge on activity in first season grazing lambs naturally exposed to two different levels of multispecies GIN infections. Ewes and their twin-born lambs were turned-out to graze in two permanent pasture enclosures naturally contaminated with GIN the previous year, thereby exposing them to overwintering strongyle larvae. Animals in the low parasite exposure group (LP) were dewormed monthly with 0.2 mg ivermectin (Ivomec® vet, oral suspension) per kg body weight, whereas those in high parasite exposure group (HP) were left untreated. At weaning, lambs were allocated to one out of four groups based on weight and sex (HPE, n = 15; HPR, n = 15; LPE, n = 14; LPR, n = 14), in four nearby non-contaminated ley enclosures of similar size. Activity patterns were monitored from day -7, i.e. 7 days pre-weaning, until day 49, i.e. 49 days post-weaning, by fitting all lambs with IceQube sensors (IceRobotics). Body weight was monitored weekly from day -21, whereas faecal samples were investigated at days -21, 7, 35 and 49 for nematode faecal egg counts (EPG) using McMaster-technology and a validated Droplet Digital PCR protocol to determine nematode composition. All statistical analyses were performed in R studio, using mixed models with repeated measures. In the data analyses, weekly recordings was treated as a period, generating a total of eight periods. Average daily lying time had a significant interaction between parasite exposure and period (P = 0.0013), with animals in HP having a 101 ± 31 min shorter daily lying time compared to LP. Motion Index (MI; absolute value of the 3-D acceleration) had a significant interaction between parasite exposure and period (P = 0.0001) with lambs in group HP having a lower average daily MI compared with LP. Both body weight gain and EPG levels were significantly different (P<0.0001) between HP and LP groups during the course of the study. The molecular investigation showed that animals were predominantly infected with Teladorsagia spp., combined with low proportions of Haemonchus spp. In conclusion, this study shows that lying time and Motion Index of lambs around weaning was affected by moderate nematode infections. This indicates that there is a potential use of automated behaviour recordings as a diagnostic tool for detection of nematode parasites in lambs even at moderate infection levels.

PMID:34139614 | DOI:10.1016/j.vetpar.2021.109500

J Hum Evol. 2021 Jun 14;157:103025. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2021.103025. Online ahead of print.

NO ABSTRACT

PMID:34139622 | DOI:10.1016/j.jhevol.2021.103025

Environ Int. 2021 Jun 14;155:106688. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2021.106688. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Car microenvironments significantly contribute to the daily pollution exposure of commuters, yet health and socioeconomic studies focused on in-car exposure are rare. This study aims to assess the relationship between air pollution levels and socioeconomic indicators (fuel prices, city-specific GDP, road density, the value of statistical life (VSL), health burden and economic losses resulting from exposure to fine particulate matter ≤2.5 µm; PM_2.5) during car journeys in ten cities: Dhaka (Bangladesh); Chennai (India); Guangzhou (China); Medellín (Colombia); São Paulo (Brazil); Cairo (Egypt); Sulaymaniyah (Iraq); Addis Ababa (Ethiopia); Blantyre (Malawi); and Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania). Data collected by portable laser particle counters were used to develop a proxy of car-user exposure profiles. Hotspots on all city routes displayed higher PM_2.5 concentrations and disproportionately high inhaled doses. For instance, the time spent at the hotspots in Guangzhou and Addis Ababa was 26% and 28% of total trip time, but corresponded to 54% and 56%, respectively, of the total PM_2.5 inhaled dose. With the exception of Guangzhou, all the cities showed a decrease in per cent length of hotspots with an increase in GDP and VSL. Exposure levels were independent of fuel prices in most cities. The largest health burden related to in-car PM_2.5 exposure was estimated for Dar-es-Salam (81.6 ± 39.3 μg m^-3), Blantyre (82.9 ± 44.0) and Dhaka (62.3 ± 32.0) with deaths per 100,000 of the car commuting population per year of 2.46 (2.28-2.63), 1.11 (0.97-1.26) and 1.10 (1.05-1.15), respectively. However, the modest health burden of 0.07 (0.06-0.08), 0.10 (0.09-0.12) and 0.02 (0.02-0.03) deaths per 100,000 of the car commuting population per year were estimated for Medellin (23 ± 13.7 μg m^-3), São Paulo (25.6 ± 11.7) and Sulaymaniyah (22.4 ± 15.0), respectively. Lower GDP was found to be associated with higher economic losses due to health burdens caused by air pollution in most cities, indicating a socioeconomic discrepancy. This assessment of health and socioeconomic parameters associated with in-car PM_2.5 exposure highlights the importance of implementing plausible solutions to make a positive impact on peoples’ lives in these cities.

PMID:34139587 | DOI:10.1016/j.envint.2021.106688

Res Dev Disabil. 2021 Jun 14;115:104011. doi: 10.1016/j.ridd.2021.104011. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Self-determination is essential for improving the quality of life of individuals with disabilities. Prior research has indicated that parents’ values and practices are important in supporting the development of self-determination in their children.

AIM: The purpose of the study was to examine Saudi Arabian parents’ values and perceptions regarding the importance, performance, and provision of self-determination opportunities to their high school male children with and without intellectual disability.

METHODS: The participants were 133 parents of high school children (76 parents of a child without disabilities and 57 parents of a child with intellectual disabilities, accounting for 57.1% and 42.8%, respectively). Data were collected using a self-report questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and independent samples t-tests were used to understand parents’ perceptions of and behaviors related to self-determination.

RESULTS: The results revealed no significant difference in the ratings of the importance of self-determination between the two groups of parents. Parents of children with intellectual disabilities rated their child’s self-determination performance lower and provided fewer opportunities to improve their children’s self-determination.

CONCLUSION: The results suggested that self-determination skills were valued in Saudi Arabia, highlighting that disability may affect the performance and opportunities to practice self-determination.

PMID:34139600 | DOI:10.1016/j.ridd.2021.104011

J Trace Elem Med Biol. 2021 Jun 12;68:126810. doi: 10.1016/j.jtemb.2021.126810. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Environmental factors may affecting reproductive function reduction and embryonic development. Couples who are exposed to heavy metals for a long time may affect the outcome of in vitro fertilization (IVF). To evaluate the effect of elements on IVF outcomes, a total of 195 couples undergoing IVF were included in this study.

METHODS: Elements including V, Cr, Mn, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Mo, Cd, Ba, Hg, Tl, Pb were measured in serum and follicular fluid (FF) samples of female and semen samples of male by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). Multiple linear regression were applied to evaluate the association between metal elements and semen quality parameters and the number of oocytes in MII stage. Poisson regression and the robust variance estimation of the generalized estimation equation were used to evaluate the association between elements and IVF outcomes.

RESULTS: The statistical results showed that Cr had a significant negative correlation with total sperm concentration (TSC) and total motile sperm count (TMC), the correlation coefficients were -0.52 (-0.27∼1.43) and -0.4(-1.24, 0.45), respectively. At the same time, Ba was significantly correlated with TSC and TMC, the correlation coefficients were 0.1(-0.15∼0.34) and 0.12(-0.13, 0.36), respectively. Cr, Ba and Pb in follicular fluid (FF) had a significant positive correlation with the number of oocytes in MII stage. The correlation coefficients were 3.15 (0.79, 5.52), 1.54 (-0.27, 3.36), 12.27 (7.49, 17.04). The Tl level of FF was significantly associated with the high probability of blastocyst formation and high-quality blastocysts (RR: 2.83, 95 % CI: 0.92∼7.95; RR: 3.12, 95 % CI: 0.64, 12.84). The Hg level (RR: 3.98, 95 % CI: 0.78∼14.77) and the Ba level in serum (RR: 12.75 95 % CI: 1.31∼89.71) were significantly correlated with high-quality blastocysts. The levels of Ni, Cu, Mo in seminal plasma of men were significantly correlated with blastocyst formation and high-quality blastocysts (RR values were all greater than 1.5). In addition, the level of Ba was significantly correlated with the high probability of blastocyst formation (RR: 1.7, 95 % CI: 1.14∼2.52).

CONCLUSION: Our results reveal that Cr, Ba and Pb may affect TSC, TMC and MII oocytes. Moreover, Ba, Cr, As, Hg and Tl in serum and Mo in seminal plasma were related to fertilization results, good embryos, blastocyst formation, high-quality embryos, and pregnancy and live birth rates. Tl in FF may related to the quality of embryonic development, Ba was an important risk factor which closely related to the outcomes of IVF in both male and female. Through our detection and statistical analysis of clinical samples, it is shown that although not all elements will affect the outcome of IVF the key elements we have selected need to arouse our attention, which benifit to the diagnosis and prevention of clinical infertility.

PMID:34139545 | DOI:10.1016/j.jtemb.2021.126810

J Psychosom Res. 2021 May 28;147:110537. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2021.110537. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Individuals living with coeliac disease generally experience a remission of symptoms after adopting the gluten-free diet but often report substantial treatment burden and ongoing quality of life issues. Psychosocial factors have been suggested to play a significant role in post-diagnosis quality of life but have yet to be systematically reviewed.

AIM: To review the evidence for psychosocial factors associated with quality of life in adult coeliac disease cohorts.

METHODS: Studies were identified via systematic searches of eight databases (MEDLINE, Embase, Emcare, PsycINFO, Ovid Nursing, CINAHL, Informit Health Collection, Cochrane Library) in May 2019.

RESULTS: Fourteen studies were included involving 3372 participants (80.2% female, mean age = 46.4 years). Symptoms of depression and anxiety were the most examined psychosocial factors across all studies. Quality of life was differentially associated with psychological distress, illness perceptions, coping, and attitudes/behaviours regarding food and the gluten-free diet.

CONCLUSION: Several psychosocial factors are associated with quality of life in adults living with coeliac disease. Current evidence suggests these factors are interrelated and may influence quality of life directly, via reduced psychological well-being, and indirectly, via reduced adherence to the gluten-free diet. Future research is needed to examine these processes concurrently, with the aim of elucidating the psychosocial mechanisms underlying post-diagnosis well-being and identifying potential targets for psychosocial intervention.

PMID:34139581 | DOI:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2021.110537

Sci Total Environ. 2021 Jun 8;791:148307. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148307. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Climate variables impact human health and in an era of climate change, there is a pressing need to understand these relationships to best inform how such impacts are likely to change.

OBJECTIVES: This study sought to investigate time series of daily admissions from two public hospitals in Limpopo province in South Africa with climate variability and air quality.

METHODS: We used wavelet transform cross-correlation analysis to monitor coincidences in changes of meteorological (temperature and rainfall) and air quality (concentrations of PM_2.5 and NO₂) variables with admissions to hospitals for gastrointestinal illnesses including diarrhoea, pneumonia-related diagnosis, malaria and asthma cases. We were interested to disentangle meteorological or environmental variables that might be associated with underlying temporal variations of disease prevalence measured through visits to hospitals.

RESULTS: We found preconditioning of prevalence of pneumonia by changes in air quality and showed that malaria in South Africa is a multivariate event, initiated by co-occurrence of heat and rainfall. We provided new statistical estimates of time delays between the change of weather or air pollution and increase of hospital admissions for pneumonia and malaria that are addition to already known seasonal variations. We found that increase of prevalence of pneumonia follows changes in air quality after a time period of 10 to 15 days, while the increase of incidence of malaria follows the co-occurrence of high temperature and rainfall after a 30-day interval.

DISCUSSION: Our findings have relevance for early warning system development and climate change adaptation planning to protect human health and well-being.

PMID:34139502 | DOI:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148307

Forensic Sci Int Genet. 2021 Apr 20;54:102519. doi: 10.1016/j.fsigen.2021.102519. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The present work proposes a general strategy for dealing with missing person identification cases through DNA-database search. Our main example is the identification of abducted children in the last civic-dictatorship of Argentina, known as the “Missing Grandchildren of Argentina”. Particularly we focus on those pedigrees where few, or only distant relatives of the missing person are available, resulting in low statistical power. For such complex cases we provide a statistical method for selecting a likelihood ratio (LR) threshold for each pedigree based on error rates. Furthermore, we provide an open-source user friendly software for computing LR thresholds and error rates. The strategy described in the paper could be applied to other large-scale cases of DNA-based identification hampered by low statistical power.

PMID:34139527 | DOI:10.1016/j.fsigen.2021.102519

Sci Total Environ. 2021 May 28;791:148084. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148084. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Obesity is a well-known risk factor for public health. Recent studies found that greenness exposure may protect against obesity. However, the accumulated evidence on associations of greenness-obesity is inconsistent and most of them are from developed countries.

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to evaluate the associations of greenness exposure with indicators of peripheral and central obesity.

METHODS: This cross-sectional study was based on a Chinese national Sub-Clinical Outcomes of Polluted Air (SCOPA) prospective cohort across 15 provinces, and 5849 participants with average age of 64.7 were included. Surrounding greenness was estimated with the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), which was calculated at each participant’s residential addresses within a 250 m buffer. Weight, height and waist circumference (WC) were measured, and body mass index (BMI) and the waist-to-height ratio% (WHtR%) were calculated based on those measurements. The relationships between EVI and obese outcomes were explored using multiple linear regression and logistic regression models.

RESULTS: Non-linear associations were observed between EVI and obese indicators. Participants living in Quartile 3 benefited more than in Quartile 4 compared to the lowest quartile (Quartile 1) of greenness. For peripheral obesity, participants living in Quartile 3 of EVI_250m had 0.86 kg/m² (β -0.86, 95% CI: -1.10, -0.61) lower BMI, and 46% (OR 0.54, 95% CI: 0.44-0.66) lower odds of peripheral obesity than in Quartile 1. For central obesity, participants living in Quartile 3 of EVI_250m had 1.85 cm (β -1.85, 95% CI: -2.54, -1.15) lower waist circumference, 1.12% (β -1.12, 95% CI: -1.56, -0.67) lower waist-to-height ratio% (WHtR%), and 33% (OR 0.67, 95% CI: 0.57-0.78) lower odds of central obesity than in Quartile 1 of EVI_250m.

CONCLUSIONS: Higher levels of greenness were statistically significant associated with lower obesity risk.

PMID:34139501 | DOI:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148084

Prim Care Companion CNS Disord. 2021 Jun 17;23(3):21m02936. doi: 10.4088/PCC.21m02936.

ABSTRACT

Objective: To study the pattern of admissions in a psychiatry ward during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and compare the sociodemographic and clinical profiles of patients admitted in 2020 with admissions in 2019.

Methods: The case record files of an inpatient psychiatric unit from March 23 to September 22, 2019, and March 23 to September 22, 2020 were retrieved. Sociodemographic data, admission criteria of the patients, clinical diagnosis (as per ICD-10 criteria), duration of stay in the ward, and details of capacity assessment were assessed. The data collected were tabulated as per coding system and analyzed and compared using statistical analysis system software.

Results: Of a total of 312 admissions, 236 were in 2019 and 76 were in 2020 (P < .05), which was a significant (P < .05) decrease. More patients admitted in 2020 were in the age group of 30-39 years (P < .05), were residents of Chandigarh (P < .05), were housewives by occupation (P < .05), had incomes < 3,500 Indian rupees (US$ 48.01) per month (P < .01), were Hindu, and belonged to extended families (P < .05). The predominant reasons for admission in 2020 were complicated withdrawals, noncompliance to treatment (P < .05), and aggravation of psychiatric illness due to comorbid substance use. The ICD diagnoses schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorder (F20-29) and mood disorders, predominantly mania (F30-31) were significantly higher and mental and behavioral disorder due to psychoactive substance use (F10-19) was lower among patients admitted in 2020.

Conclusions: The results show that the numbers of admissions to the psychiatry ward in 2020 were significantly lower than pre-COVID 2019, and the predominant reasons for admission were complicated withdrawals due to psychoactive substance abuse and noncompliance to treatment. Also, the mean duration of stay was longer in 2020 compared to the previous year.

PMID:34139110 | DOI:10.4088/PCC.21m02936