Search

Objective: To determine factors indicating testing frequency and positive test results in a Division I sports department intrapandemic., Design: Retrospective analysis., Setting: A single Division I collegiate sports department., Patients: All student-athlete (n = 437), student staff (n = 89), and adult staff (n = 202) members of the sports department. Total cohort (n = 728)., Interventions: The authors analyzed the independent variables of local positive rates, sport characteristics, and campus events for impact on the volume of the departmental testing and positive rates., Main Outcome Measures: Measured dependent variables of the volume of departmental testing and positive rates were analyzed., Results: Positive predictive rates (PPRs) largely differed from local, off-campus rates in timing and duration (59.52%: P < 0.05). Overall, 20633 tests were administered with 201 positive results (0.97% PPR). Student-athlete numbers were highest in all categories, followed by adult then student staff. Greater proportions of contact sports became positive (53.03%: P < 0.001) and all-male sports (47.69%: P < 0.001). No comparative difference was seen for teams using fomites (19.15%: P = 0.403). Spring sports teams had the lowest percentage of the team positive (22.22%: P < 0.001). Winter sports had the highest PPR (1.15%), all occurring during team-controlled activities. Playing sports indoors did not increase inside team-controlled activity positive rates ( P = 0.066)., Conclusions: Longitudinal changes in local, off-campus infection rates partially affected sports departmental positive results while testing rates were more influenced by sport and university schedule. Testing resources should be directed toward high-risk sports, which included contact sports (football, basketball, and soccer), all-male teams, both Winter and indoor sports inside team-controlled activities, and sports with long periods of time outside team-controlled activities., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Some effects of expressing stereotypic behavior have not yet been elucidated. During gestation, the environment has the potential to interfere with offspring development and to have prenatal or longer-term consequences. We tested the hypothesis that the occurrence of stereotypic behavior during gestation could affect the phenotype of the offspring. Twenty-eight pregnant sows were studied by comparing two groups differing in the amount of stereotypy shown. We analyzed emotionality in the offspring from sows showing high or low stereotypy frequency using the open field and novel object tests. In the open field test, piglets from sows with a high rate of stereotypies walked more in central sectors ( p < 0.0001) and lateral sectors ( p = 0.04) than piglets from sows with a low rate of stereotypies. In the novel object test, the offspring from low stereotypy sows vocalized more ( p = 0.008). We demonstrate for the first time that the stereotypic behavior by the mother during gestation changes the phenotype of the offspring, in particular, their emotionality., (Copyright © 2020 Tatemoto, Bernardino, Morrone, Queiroz and Zanella.)

Manure from lactating and non-lactating water buffaloes was separately collected from a single dairy farm and anaerobically digested under mesophilic conditions in batch mode to produce biogas. This substrate, scarcely studied in the literature, showed two peculiarities regarding two fundamental parameters in the digestion processes: C/N ratio and initial pH. Typically, optimal C/N varies from 20 to 30, but in this work an almost negligible role of this ratio is observed. We demonstrated it by investigating a very large C/N interval, from 9.7 to 50.1, not by adding selected nutrients to the system, but exploiting the natural variation of the substrate. Concerning the pH, we show that also typically considered unfavorable conditions are feasible for this substrate. In fact, though neutral-basic initial pH is proved to be optimal to run the digestion process, in line with many other kinds of dungs, also acid initial pH leads to satisfactory CH 4 yield. This is principally related to the capability of water buffalo manure of auto-modifying the pH to neutrality during the digestion, when initial pH of 5.0 and 6.0 are considered. This aspect may be relevant in co-digestion processes with acid wastes, since it may allow not adding neither a buffer, nor a pH regulator to the system. All the digestion conditions are separately tested with lactating and non-lactating water buffaloes and no statistical meaningful differences exist between the two kinds of cattle., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declared that there is no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Aggressive interactions, and their consequences, are the most important causes of poor welfare in piglets. Aggressive behaviour can be modulated by the prenatal and neonatal environment in several species. Commercially kept pregnant sows are often subjected to food restriction, which can compromise their welfare. Limited information is available on the consequences of sow hunger during pregnancy on welfare outcomes for their piglets. High fibre diets can mitigate the feeling of hunger and, consequently, it may improve welfare and productivity measures. The aim of this study was to assess the consequences of feeding pregnant gilts with high fibre diets (HFD) on agonistic behaviour, as manifested by skin lesions, and indicators of fear in their piglets at weaning. Twenty-two pregnant gilts were fed either HFD, 12.86% of crude fibre, 2.4 kg per day (N = 14), or low fibre diet (LFD), 2.53% of crude fibre, 2.0 kg per day (N = 8). During lactation, both treatments received the same diet, ad libitum. We investigated the impact of HFD on behaviour and performance measures (birth weight, average daily gain, weaning weight, see S3 File) in the offspring. Skin lesions were evaluated before and after weaning in 156 piglets (100 HFD and 56 LFD), and 142 piglets were subjected to an open field test and a novel object test (87 HFD and 55 LFD). We found no treatment effect on the performance measures. Piglets born from gilts that received HFD had fewer skin lesions before weaning (D28) than the offspring of LFD gilts, while no difference was found during days 29 and 30. In the open field and novel object tests, there was no treatment effect on the behaviour of piglets. The improved skin health at weaning in piglets of sows fed HFD suggests less agonistic interactions amongst these littermates than in piglets of sows fed LFD., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Cytokines are cell signalling proteins that mediate a number of different physiological responses. They are also biomarkers for inflammatory conditions and potential diagnostic references for diseases. Until recently, simultaneous quantification of cytokine profiles had not been possible. Now however, fluorescent microsphere immunoassays (FMIA) are able to measure multiple cytokines in a single sample. The following pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines were quantified in equine plasma and serum samples: interleukin (IL)-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, interferon (IFN)-γ, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α. •The objective of this study was to quantify six equine cytokines simultaneously using the BioPlex(®) 200 system in equine EDTA-plasma and serum.•It demonstrates an increased number of detectable cytokines over published studies.•This technology has the advantage of reduced sample volume and assay time compared to traditional sandwich ELISAs.

Buffalo dung is a low-cost substrate with plenty of carbohydrates, an optimal carbon/nitrogen ratio, and a rich microbial flora, and could become a valuable source of biogas. Therefore, in the present study we compared the type and amount of specific eubacteria to the different configurations of pH, temperature and thermal pretreatment after fermentation in batch reactors in order to understand the suitability of buffalo manure for hydrogen production. The phylogenetic structure of the microbial community in fermentation samples was studied using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis to generate fingerprints of 16S rRNA genes. The sequences analysis revealed abundance of the phyla Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes, and in particular of the order Clostridiales. Very active hydrogen producing bacteria belonging to Clostridium cellulosi species were identified demonstrating the suitability of this substrate to produce hydrogen. Moreover, a large fraction of 16S-rDNA amplicons could not be assigned to lower taxonomic ranks, demonstrating that numerous microorganisms involved in anaerobic fermentation in digesters or bioreactors are still unclassified or unknown.

Objectives: Sevoflurane is an inhalation halogenated anaesthetic widely used in day and paediatric surgery. We were interested in evaluating biological markers of exposure to sevoflurane, which should improve the health surveillance of occupationally exposed personnel., Methods: A group of 36 subjects (13 male, 23 female) occupationally exposed to volatile anaesthetics in paediatric operating rooms was studied in a 2-week survey. Post-shift urine samples and specimens from passive samplers (for personal monitoring) were collected after 1.75-6 h morning exposure and analysed by headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Multiple determinations were assumed as independent values (in total, n = 78: 24 from men, 54 from women; 25 from smokers, 53 from non-smokers)., Results: Median sevoflurane external values were 0.13 parts per million (ppm) (range 0.03-18.82) (n = 78), urinary sevoflurane 0.6 microg/l urine (ND-18.5)(n = 76) and total urinary hexafluoro-isopropanol (HFIP) 0.49 mg/l urine (ND-6833.4) (n = 75). A lower limit of detection (LOD) was achieved for urinary sevoflurane (0.03 microg/l urine), allowing quantitation of all but one of the samples; >25% of urine samples were unquantifiable by HFIP and were assigned a value equal to half the LOD of 0.10 mg/l(urine). Urinary sevoflurane correlated well with breathing-zone data (r2 = 0.697 at log-log linear regression), whereas total urinary HFIP (r2 = 0.562 at log-log linear regression) seemed to be better described by a three-parameter logistic function and appeared to be influenced by smoking habits. Biological indices corresponding to National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) exposure limits, calculated as means of linear regression slope and y intercept, were 3.9 mug/l(urine) and 1.4 microg/l urine for sevoflurane (corresponding to 2 ppm and 0.5 ppm, respectively), and 2.66 mg/l urine and 0.82 mg/l urine for HFIP., Conclusions: On the basis of our data, urinary unmodified, sevoflurane seems to be a more sensitive and reliable biomarker of short-term exposure to sevoflurane with respect to total urinary metabolite HFIP, which appears to be influenced by physiological and/or genetic individual traits, and seems to provide an estimate of integrated exposure.

To increase sample throughput for GC analysis of inhalation anaesthetics without affecting the separation of nitrous oxide (N2O) and halogenated anaesthetics (sevoflurane, isoflurane and halothane), we explored the effectiveness of a tailor-shortened (12 m) PlotQ capillary column and developed a high-speed version of a previously reported GC technique (involving chromatographic separation of analytes using a GC-MS system, coupled with a selected ion monitoring (SIM) method to increase sensitivity). Efficient separation and repeatable results were achieved at a reduced runtime of approximately 7 min (versus 18 min with the original method) at a carrier gas flow of 1.5 ml/min. This approach should more than double the previous throughput.

Unmodified sevoflurane and its metabolite, hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP), have both been proposed as biomarkers of exposure in post-shift urine for operating room personnel exposed to inhalation anaesthetic sevoflurane. We used headspace sorptive extraction (HSSE) and thermal desorption-capillary GC-MS to assess sensitively both compounds in the urine matrix (after a HFIP deconjugation step). In GC-MS splitless mode, calibration plots (approximately 15-650 microg/L) were linear (r2 > 0.9910) and the limits of detection (1 microg/L for both biomarkers) showed increased sensitivity for HFIP with respect to the previously described headspace GC-MS method. The method was suitable for biological monitoring of both biomarkers of exposure to sevoflurane.

Objectives: Chronic diarrhea of unknown origin is often associated with bile acid malabsorption, the pathogenetic role of which is uncertain. The aim of this study was to identify morphological abnormalities in the ileal and colonic mucosa in patients with this disorder., Methods: We performed a prospective and blinded histopathological study (between June 1991 and November 1992) of endoscopic biopsies of the distal ileum and colon of 23 patients suffering from chronic diarrhea of unknown origin. In 14, the SeHCAT (75-selena-homo-cholic acid taurine) test was abnormal owing to bile acid malabsorption; in the other nine, the diarrhea control group, the test results were normal. A detailed evaluation of surface epithelium, immune response and inflammatory changes was made., Results: in two patients and two controls, mild villous atrophy was observed; there was also slight inflammation of the ileal and colonic mucosa occurring with the same frequency in both groups. A slight replacement of goblet cells was more evident in the diarrhea control group., Conclusions: Chronic diarrhea of unknown origin associated with bile acid malabsorption does not involve specific morphological changes of ileal or colonic mucosa, and its pathogenesis must be looked for in dysfunction of the ileum and/or colon.

An uncommon case of huge pineal germinoma without associated ventricular enlargement is presented. The tumor extended supratentorially in dumb-bell form to affect both cerebral hemispheres, simulating a glioma at neuroradiological examinations. Subtotal removal through a bilateral parieto-occipital approach plus radiation therapy were followed by relief of symptoms for over one year since surgery. The misleading patterns of the tumor and the delayed onset of symptoms in our case are outlined.

Five cases of cerebral cavernous angiomas in children are presented. Three children had seizures as the sole manifestation of the lesion, and two had intracerebral bleeding. These malformations are encountered more commonly in adults in the third to fifth decade, and are found most frequently in the white matter of the cerebral hemispheres. Intracranial bleeding, seizures, headaches, and slowly developing focal signs are the usual presenting complaints. In childhood, seizures are the initial symptom of the malformation in many cases. The value of computerized tomography (CT) in the detection of such malformations is stressed, and CT findings that are characteristic of cavernous angiomas are described.

Two cases of paraventricular cavernous angiomas are presented. In one, the cavernous angioma was found in the right wall of the fourth ventricle, and in the other in the right thalamus encroaching upon the third ventricle. Both patients had onset of symptoms suggesting a tumor. Good results were obtained by the microsurgical approach to these malformations. The computerized tomography findings typical of cavernous angiomas are reviewed

A case of sublingual rhabdomyoma (adult type) in a 40-year-old man is reported. A review of the world literature revealed 28 acceptable previous cases.