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Recent foodborne illness outbreaks have heightened pressures on growers to deter wildlife from farms, jeopardizing conservation efforts. However, it remains unclear which species, particularly birds, pose the greatest risk to food safety. Using >11,000 pathogen tests and 1565 bird surveys covering 139 bird species from across the western United States, we examined the importance of 11 traits in mediating wild bird risk to food safety. We tested whether traits associated with pathogen exposure (e.g., habitat associations, movement, and foraging strategy) and pace-of-life (clutch size and generation length) mediated foodborne pathogen prevalence and proclivities to enter farm fields and defecate on crops. Campylobacter spp. were the most prevalent enteric pathogen (8.0%), while Salmonella and Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli (STEC) were rare (0.46% and 0.22% prevalence, respectively). We found that several traits related to pathogen exposure predicted pathogen prevalence. Specifically, Campylobacter and STEC-associated virulence genes were more often detected in species associated with cattle feedlots and bird feeders, respectively. Campylobacter was also more prevalent in species that consumed plants and had longer generation lengths. We found that species associated with feedlots were more likely to enter fields and defecate on crops. Our results indicated that canopy-foraging insectivores were less likely to deposit foodborne pathogens on crops, suggesting growers may be able to promote pest-eating birds and birds of conservation concern (e.g., via nest boxes) without necessarily compromising food safety. As such, promoting insectivorous birds may represent a win-win-win for bird conservation, crop production, and food safety. Collectively, our results suggest that separating crop production from livestock farming may be the best way to lower food safety risks from birds. More broadly, our trait-based framework suggests a path forward for co-managing wildlife conservation and food safety risks in farmlands by providing a strategy for holistically evaluating the food safety risks of wild animals, including under-studied species., (© 2021 The Ecological Society of America.)

Regulatory bodies weighing market approval for novel medical devices must balance the benefits and potential hazards carefully. We performed a legal and policy review of appraoches in the US, EU, Japan, and China to device regulation with a focus on postmarket surveillance. These markets share broad features such as a heavy reliance on passive adverse event collection, reflected by growing enthusiasm for more active and dynamic mechanisms such as unique device identification. More immediately, US and EU systems might benefit from scheduled, compulsory, and consequential re-examination of select devices, as is done in Japan and China, in order to strengthen post-market protection of patients and bolster public health.

Context: Genetic determinants of Alzheimer disease (AD) have not been comprehensively examined in Caribbean Hispanics, a population in the United States in whom the frequency of AD is higher compared with non-Hispanic whites., Objective: To identify variant alleles in genes related to familial early-onset AD among Caribbean Hispanics., Design and Setting: Family-based case series conducted in 1998-2001 at an AD research center in New York, NY, and clinics in the Dominican Republic., Patients: Among 206 Caribbean Hispanic families with 2 or more living members with AD who were identified, 19 (9.2%) had at least 1 individual with onset of AD before the age of 55 years., Main Outcome Measure: The entire coding region of the presenilin 1 gene and exons 16 and 17 of the amyloid precursor protein gene were sequenced in probands from the 19 families and their living relatives., Results: A G-to-C nucleotide change resulting in a glycine-alanine amino acid substitution at codon 206 (Gly206Ala) in exon 7 of presenilin 1 was observed in 23 individuals from 8 (42%) of the 19 families. A Caribbean Hispanic individual with the Gly206Ala mutation and early-onset familial disease was also found by sequencing the corresponding genes of 319 unrelated individuals in New York City. The Gly206Ala mutation was not found in public genetic databases but was reported in 5 individuals from 4 Hispanic families with AD referred for genetic testing. None of the members of these families were related to one another, yet all carriers of the Gly206Ala mutation tested shared a variant allele at 2 nearby microsatellite polymorphisms, indicating a common ancestor. No mutations were found in the amyloid precursor protein gene., Conclusions: The Gly206Ala mutation was found in 8 of 19 unrelated Caribbean Hispanic families with early-onset familial AD. This genetic change may be a prevalent cause of early-onset familial AD in the Caribbean Hispanic population.