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In a rapidly growing global probiotic market, end-users have difficulty distinguishing between high quality and poor quality products. This ambiguity threatens the trust consumers and healthcare providers have in probiotic products. To address this problem, we recommend that companies undergo third-party evaluations to certify probiotic quality and label accuracy. In order to communicate about product quality to end-users, indication of certification on product labels is helpful, although not all manufacturers choose to use this approach. Herein we discuss: third-party certification, the process of setting standards for identity, purity, and quantification of probiotics; some emerging methodologies useful for quality assessment; and some technical challenges unique to managing quality of live microbial products. This review provides insights of an Expert Panel engaged in this process and aims to update the reader on relevant current scientific methodologies. Establishing validated methodologies for all aspects of quality assessment is an essential component of this process and can be facilitated by established organizations, such as United States Pharmacopeia. Emerging methodologies including whole genome sequencing and flow cytometry are poised to play important roles in these processes.

The relative concentrations of unhydrolyzed and hydrolyzed forms of (3-trimethoxysilyl) propyloctadecyldimethylammonium chloride (SiQAC) were determined in aqueous solutions as functions of pH and time. Subtraction of the concentrations of these two forms of SiQAC from the total concentration of SiQAC was assumed to give the concentration of the “condensed” form of SiQAC irrespective of its extent of oligomerization. The silane, SiQAC, is used to modify a variety of surfaces to impart antimicrobial properties. Knowledge of the speciation of SiQAC is required to understand its effect on the efficiency and durability of such chemically modified surfaces. The cylindrical internal- reflection/FTIR spectroscopy was also used to determine the rate constants for hydrolysis and condensation of monomethoxytrimethylsilane (MTMS) in 10% (v/v) water/acetone medium as a function of hydrogen-ion concentration. The hydrolysis of MTMS was found to be first order in both silane and water concentrations. the condensation of trimethylsilanol to form hexamthyldisiloxane was second order in silanol concentration.

Methods of chemometrics were employed to determine the reasons for variable performance in an industrial process. A multistage silver recovery process was investigated by statistical examination of the parameters and performance criteria. Once a likely source of variability was identified, fractional factorial experimental designs were employed to estimate the magnitude of influence of the chemical components in the process.

IPPHTHERIA, onice primarily a disease of infants and young children, has been increasing among adults and teen-aged children over the past 20 years (1-4). The shift in age-specific morbidity rates can be traced to markedly decreasing exposures to virulent Corynebacterium. diphtheriae. The almost universal artificial immunization of infants and children has resulted in less frequent natural immunity among adults. Somewhere between the adult and the child, lhowever, lies a zone where the protection of unreinforced early immunization begins to wear off. Outbreaks of diphtheria in Detroit, Mich., Albuquerque, N. Mex., and South Carolina in the fall of 1956, while this study was still in the planning stages, pointed up the importance of continued awareness of the disease as a public health problein (5, 6). It also reemphasized the value of current data on the relative immunity of various population segments in anticipating and preventing outbreaks. In this study we undertook specifically to determine the relative immunity to diphtheria of the young adult population in an area where only 2 cases, both in white men in their early twenties, have been reported during the preceding 2 years. The study was conducted in Montgomery County, Md., during January and February 1957. The county, principally a suburban residential center, is northwest of the District of Columbia and has an area of about 525 square miles. Its population, growing at a prodigious rate in the postwar period wvith the influx of Governament workers, is niearly 300,000. Of these, 6 percent are Negro. The county has the highest per capita income in Maryland. Information gathered at the time of preschool conferences over the past 4 years reveals that about 92.5 percent of Montgomery County children have been actively immunized against diphtheria prior to registering for school, and the remainder are almost all given prinmary immunizations at this time (7). However, because of the large population influx, the inadequacy of transferred school health records, and basic doubt as to the duration of immunization in infancy and early childhood (8), the status of children finishing high school has been heretofore unknown. With the approval of the Montgomery County Medical Society and the superintendent of schools and the aid of the Maryland State Departmenlt of Health, the Montgomery County Health Department planned to give Schick tests to all 12th grade students in the county's nine high schools.

During a 32-week period from November 1963 through June 1964, an epidemic of 123 cases of viral hepatitis following ingestion of raw clams occurred in Connecticut. Several observations supported the incrimination of raw clams as the vehicle: a high proportion of cases among adult males, a low proportion of patients having history of contact with a previous case, the occurrence of cases in two epidemic waves, the similarity between the known incubation period of infectious hepatitis and the intervals from consumption of raw clams to onset of illness, and results of a survey which indicated that more than six times as many hepatitis patients had eaten raw clams as had persons without hepatitis. The clams probably came through the regular commercial channels from several suppliers, but their harvesting waters could not be identified.