Biodiversity impacts of the 2019-2020 Australian megafires.

With large wildfires becoming more frequent, we must rapidly learn how megafires impact biodiversity to prioritize mitigation and improve policy. A key challenge is to discover how interactions among fire-regime components, drought and land tenure shape wildfire impacts. The globally unprecedented 2019-2020 Australian megafires burnt more than 10 million hectares, prompting major investment in biodiversity monitoring.

The nasopharyngeal microbiome in South African children with lower respiratory tract infection: a nested case-control study of the Drakenstein Child Health Study.

Background: Lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) is a leading cause of infant morbidity and mortality globally. LRTI may be caused by viral or bacterial infections, individually or in combination. We investigated associations between LRTI and infant nasopharyngeal (NP) viruses and bacteria in a South African birth cohort.

Grandmaternal pre-pregnancy body mass index and infant birthweight: a mediation analysis of maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index.

The objectives of this study were to examine the total effect of grandmaternal [G0] pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) on infant [G2] birthweight z-score and to quantify the mediation role of maternal [G1] pre-pregnancy BMI. Data were extracted from the Nova Scotia 3G Multigenerational Cohort. The association between G0 pre-pregnancy BMI and G2 birthweight z-score and the mediated effect by G1 pre-pregnancy BMI were estimated using g-computation with adjustment for confounders identified using a directed acyclic graph and accounting for intermediate confounding.

Humanistic burden of pediatric type 1 diabetes on children and informal caregivers: systematic literature reviews.

Background: Diagnosis of children with type 1 diabetes (T1D) imposes an unprecedented burden on children and their caregivers.

Objective: To assess the burden of T1D on children and their informal caregivers, both after a recent diagnosis or after a longer duration of disease.

Methods: A series of systematic literature reviews were performed to explore the burden of T1D on children with the disease and their primary informal caregivers, based on the time of diagnosis.

Can laboratory HIV and infectious syphilis data inform future pre-exposure prophylaxis use in women in Ontario, Canada?

Objectives: Infectious syphilis has been proposed as an indication for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in women. We explored how many women experienced HIV seroconversion after being diagnosed with syphilis in Ontario between 20 April 2010 and 31 December 2021.

Methods: Through deterministic linkage of laboratory data at the Public Health Ontario laboratory, which conducts the vast majority of syphilis and HIV testing in Ontario, we quantified the number of females with positive syphilis diagnoses who subsequently exhibited HIV seroconversion between April 2010 and December 2021.

A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Anti-Rheumatic Drugs and Pneumococcal Vaccine Immunogenicity in Inflammatory Arthritis.

Background: Pneumococcal pneumonia is an important cause of morbidity and mortality amongst patients with inflammatory arthritis. Vaccination is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) but it remains unclear how vaccine efficacy is impacted by different immunosuppressive agents. Our objective was to compare the chance of a seroconversion following vaccination against pneumococcus in patients with inflammatory arthritis to that in the general population, as well as to compare the chance of seroconversion across different targeted therapies.

Guideline No. 443b: Opioid Use Throughout Women's Lifespan: Opioid Use in Pregnancy and Breastfeeding.

Objective: To provide health care providers the best evidence on opioid use and women's health. Areas of focus include pregnancy and postpartum care.

Target Population: The target population includes all women currently using or contemplating using opioids.

Guideline No. 443a: Opioid Use Throughout Women's Lifespan: Fertility, Contraception, Chronic Pain, and Menopause.

Objective: To provide health care providers with the best evidence on opioid use and women's health. Areas of focus include general patterns of opioid use and safety of use; care of women who use opioids; stigma, screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment; hormonal regulation; reproductive health, including contraception and fertility; sexual function; perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms; and chronic pelvic pain syndromes.

Target Population: The target population includes all women currently using or contemplating using opioids.

[Directive clinique n 443b : Opioïdes aux différentes étapes de la vie des femmes : Grossesse et allaitement].

Objectif: Présenter aux professionnels de la santé les données probantes concernant l'utilisation des opioïdes et la santé des femmes. Les domaines d'intérêt sont la grossesse et les soins post-partum.

Population Cible: Toutes les femmes qui utilisent des opioïdes.

Validation of Ultrasound Dating Protocols Using Data From Twins Conceived Through In Vitro Fertilization in Nova Scotia: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

Objectives: Clinical practice guidelines recommend determining gestational age (GA) for twin pregnancies using the fetal crown rump length (CRL) of the larger fetus. This study investigated whether the CRL of the larger or smaller fetus at 11-14 weeks best predicted in vitro fertilization (IVF) assigned GA.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study of twin pregnancies conceived by IVF ± intracytoplasmic sperm injection, 2004-2022, generated GA estimations for each co-twin CRL at the 11-14 week ultrasound, to determine which fetus (smaller or larger) more consistently predicted IVF-assigned GA.

Functional organization of visual responses in the octopus optic lobe.

Cephalopods are highly visual animals with camera-type eyes, large brains, and a rich repertoire of visually guided behaviors. However, the cephalopod brain evolved independently from those of other highly visual species, such as vertebrates; therefore, the neural circuits that process sensory information are profoundly different. It is largely unknown how their powerful but unique visual system functions, as there have been no direct neural measurements of visual responses in the cephalopod brain.

Changes in hospitalizations and emergency department respiratory viral diagnosis trends before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada.

Introduction: Population-level surveillance systems have demonstrated reduced transmission of non-SARS-CoV-2 respiratory viruses during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we examined whether this reduction translated to reduced hospital admissions and emergency department (ED) visits associated with influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus, human parainfluenza virus, adenovirus, rhinovirus/enterovirus, and common cold coronavirus in Ontario.

Methods: Hospital admissions were identified from the Discharge Abstract Database and exclude elective surgical admissions and non-emergency medical admissions (January 2017-March 2022).

A Quieter Ocean: Experimentally Derived Differences in Attentive Responses of to Anthropogenic Noise Playbacks before and during the COVID-19-Related Anthropause.

The effects of anthropogenic noise continue to threaten marine fauna, yet the impacts of human-produced sound on the broad aspects of cognition in marine mammals remain relatively understudied. The shutdown of non-essential activities due to the COVID-19-related anthropause created an opportunity to determine if reducing levels of oceanic anthropogenic noise on cetaceans affected processes of sensitization and habituation for common human-made sounds in an experimental setting. Dolphins at Dolphin Quest Bermuda were presented with three noises related to human activities (cruise ship, personal watercraft, and Navy low-frequency active sonar) both in 2018 and again during the anthropause in 2021 via an underwater speaker.

Antenatal Corticosteroid Prophylaxis at Late Preterm Gestation: Clinical Guidelines Versus Clinical Practice.

Objective: We investigated how the Antenatal Late Preterm Steroids (ALPS) trial findings have been translated into clinical practice in Canada and the United States (U.S.).

Functional organization of visual responses in the octopus optic lobe.

Unlabelled: Cephalopods are highly visual animals with camera-type eyes, large brains, and a rich repertoire of visually guided behaviors. However, the cephalopod brain evolved independently from that of other highly visual species, such as vertebrates, and therefore the neural circuits that process sensory information are profoundly different. It is largely unknown how their powerful but unique visual system functions, since there have been no direct neural measurements of visual responses in the cephalopod brain.

Combining analytical epidemiology and genomic surveillance to identify risk factors associated with the spread of antimicrobial resistance in subsp. serovar Heidelberg.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has become a critical threat to public health worldwide. The use of antimicrobials in food and livestock agriculture, including the production of poultry, is thought to contribute to the dissemination of antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB) and the genes and plasmids that confer the resistant phenotype (ARG). However, the relative contribution of each of these processes to the emergence of resistant pathogens in poultry production and their potential role in the transmission of resistant pathogens in human infections, requires a deeper understanding of the dynamics of ARB and ARG in food production and the factors involved in the increased risk of transmission.