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The skin harbors diverse communities of microorganisms, and alterations to these communities can impact the effectiveness of the skin as a barrier to infectious organisms or injury. As the global availability and adoption of antibacterial products increases, it is important to understand how these products affect skin microbial communities of people living in rural areas of developing countries, where risks of infection and injury often differ from urban populations in developed countries. We investigated the effect of antibacterial soap on skin microbial communities in a rural Malagasy population that practices subsistence agriculture in the absence of electricity and running water. We quantified the amount of soap used by each participant and obtained skin swab samples at three time points: prior to soap use, immediately after one week of soap use, and two weeks after soap use was discontinued. Soap use did not significantly impact ecological measures of diversity and richness (alpha diversity). However, the amount of soap used was a predictor of community-level change (beta diversity), with changes persisting for at least two weeks after subjects stopped using soap. Our results indicate that the overall species richness of skin microbial communities may be resistant to short-term use of antibacterial soap in settings characterized by regular contact with the natural environment, yet these communities may undergo shifts in microbial composition. Lifestyle changes associated with the use of antibacterial soap may therefore cause rapid alterations in skin microbial communities, with the potential for effects on skin health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elevated blood pressure presents a global health threat, with rates of hypertension increasing in low and middle-income countries. Lifestyle changes may be an important driver of these increases in blood pressure. Hypertension is particularly prevalent in African countries, though the majority of studies have focused on mainland Africa. We collected demographic and health data from 513 adults living in a community in rural Madagascar. We used generalized linear mixed models to assess body mass index (BMI), age, sex, and attributes related to household composition and lifestyle as predictors of blood pressure and hypertension. The prevalence of hypertension in this cohort was 49.1% (both sexes combined: N = 513; females: 50.3%, N = 290; males: 47.5%, N = 223). Blood pressure, as well as hypertensive state, was positively associated with age and BMI. Lifestyle and household factors had no significant relationships with blood pressure. The prevalence of hypertension was similar to that found in urban centers of other African countries, yet almost double what has been previously found in Madagascar. Future research should investigate the drivers of hypertension in rural communities worldwide, as well as the lifestyle, cultural, and genetic factors that underlie variation in hypertension across space and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemiological networks are commonly used to explore dynamics of parasite transmission among individuals in a population of a given host species. However, many parasites infect multiple host species, and thus multi-host networks may offer a better framework for investigating parasite dynamics. We investigated the factors that influence parasite sharing – and thus potential transmission pathways – among rodent hosts in Southeast Asia. We focused on differences between networks of a single host species and networks that involve multiple host species. In host-parasite networks, modularity (the extent to which the network is divided into subgroups of rodents that interact with similar parasites) was higher in the multi-species than in the single-species networks. This suggests that phylogeny affects patterns of parasite sharing, which was confirmed in analyses showing that it predicted affiliation of individuals to modules. We then constructed “potential transmission networks” based on the host-parasite networks, in which edges depict the similarity between a pair of individuals in the parasites they share. The centrality of individuals in these networks differed between multi- and single-species networks, with species identity and individual characteristics influencing their position in the networks. Simulations further revealed that parasite dynamics differed between multi- and single-species networks. We conclude that multi-host networks based on parasite sharing can provide new insights into the potential for transmission among hosts in an ecological community. In addition, the factors that determine the nature of parasite sharing (i.e. structure of the host-parasite network) may impact transmission patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]