Development of an Easily Reproducible Cough Simulator With Droplets and Aerosols for Rapidly Testing Novel Personal Protective Equipment.

Introduction: The current COVID-19 pandemic has produced numerous innovations in personal protective equipment, barrier devices, and infection mitigation strategies, which have not been validated. During high-risk procedures such as airway manipulation, coughs are common and discrete events that may expose healthcare workers to large amounts of viral particles. A simulated cough under controlled circumstances can rapidly test novel devices and protocols and thus aid in their evaluation and the development of implementation guidelines.

Spontaneous Cleavages of a Heterologous Protein, the CenA Endoglucanase of , in .

CenA is an endoglucanase secreted by the Gram-positive cellulolytic bacterium, , to the environment as a glycosylated protein. The role of glycosylation in CenA is unclear. However, it seems not crucial for functional activity and secretion since the unglycosylated counterpart, recombinant CenA (rCenA), is both bioactive and secretable in .

Using Simulation to Develop Solutions for Ventilator Shortages From the Epicenter.

The COVID-19 pandemic threatened to overwhelm the medical system of New York City, and the threat of ventilator shortages was real. Using high-fidelity simulation, a variety of solutions were tested to solve the problem of ventilator shortages including innovative designs for safely splitting ventilators, converting noninvasive ventilators to invasive ventilators, and testing and improving of ventilators created by outside companies. Simulation provides a safe environment for testing of devices and protocols before use on patients and should be vital in the preparation for emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Global smoking trends in inflammatory bowel disease: A systematic review of inception cohorts.

Background And Aims: The effect of smoking on the risk of developing inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) may be heterogeneous across ethnicity and geography. Although trends in smoking for the general population are well described, it is unknown whether these can be extrapolated to the IBD cohort. Smoking prevalence trends specific to the global IBD cohort over time have not been previously reported.

Systematic review with meta-analysis: review of donor features, procedures and outcomes in 168 clinical studies of faecal microbiota transplantation.

Background: Faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is effective for Clostridium difficile infections (CDI) refractory to standard treatment and is being studied in other diseases.

Aim: To evaluate donor characteristics, procedures and clinical outcomes of FMT.

Methods: We systematically reviewed FMT studies published up to 29 August 2018 using MEDLINE (R) and EMBASE and identified clinical studies with FMT donor information.