A Call to Action: Healthcare Professionals to Become Independent of the Commercial Milk Formula Industry.

Health-care professionals (HCP) have a responsibility to protect and promote maternal and infant health and breastfeeding is one of the most effective measures to support this. Increasing breastfeeding rates in Australia is crucial to improving population health, but the absence of robust policies, programmes and education for HCP undermines this effort. The pervasive marketing of commercial milk formulas (CMF), including sponsorship of HCP and their organisations, has introduced significant conflicts of interest that distort clinical practice, education, research and guidelines developed in the infant feeding domain.

Medications for community pharmacists to dose adjust or avoid to enhance prescribing safety in individuals with advanced chronic kidney disease: a scoping review and modified Delphi.

Background: Community pharmacists commonly see individuals with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and are in an ideal position to mitigate harm from inappropriate prescribing. We sought to develop a relevant medication list for community pharmacists to dose adjust or avoid in individuals with an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) below 30 mL/min informed through a scoping review and modified Delphi panel of nephrology, geriatric and primary care pharmacists.

Methods: A scoping review was undertaken to identify higher risk medications common to community pharmacy practice, which require a dose adaptation in individuals with advanced CKD.

Coverage of community-wide mass drug administration platforms for soil-transmitted helminths in Benin, India, and Malawi: findings from the DeWorm3 project.

Background: Soil-transmitted helminths (STH) affect approximately 1.5 billion people globally. The current STH control strategy is annual or twice-annual preventive chemotherapy, typically school-based deworming targeting children and women of reproductive age.

Efforts to enhance reproducibility in a human performance research project.

Ensuring the validity of results from funded programs is a critical concern for agencies that sponsor biological research. In recent years, the open science movement has sought to promote reproducibility by encouraging sharing not only of finished manuscripts but also of data and code supporting their findings. While these innovations have lent support to third-party efforts to replicate calculations underlying key results in the scientific literature, fields of inquiry where privacy considerations or other sensitivities preclude the broad distribution of raw data or analysis may require a more targeted approach to promote the quality of research output.

Improving experiences of neglected tropical diseases of the skin: Mixed methods formative research for development of a complex intervention in Atwima Mponua District, Ghana.

Integrated approaches to managing co-endemic neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) of the skin within primary healthcare services are complex and require tailoring to local contexts. We describe formative research in Atwima Mponua District in Ghana's Ashanti Region designed to inform the development of a sustainable intervention to improve access to skin NTD care. We employed a convergent, parallel, mixed-methods design, collecting data from February 2021 to February 2022.

The impact of sedation on the quality of initial skeletal surveys performed for suspected physical abuse in children: a comparative two-centre audit.

Background: The impact of sedation on the quality of initial skeletal surveys performed for suspected physical abuse in children is not known.

Objective: To assess whether sedation influenced the number of, reason for and effective dose of repeat radiographs obtained as part of initial skeletal surveys, and their mean examination times.

Materials And Methods: One hundred consecutive antemortem initial skeletal survey examinations performed for suspected physical abuse in children <2 years were retrieved from two tertiary paediatric hospitals: Centre 1, where sedation is not used for initial skeletal survey imaging; and Centre 2, where sedation is used routinely.

Identifying Potential Determinants of Faecal Contamination on Domestic Floors in Three Settings in Rural Kenya: A Mixed Methods Analysis.

Observational evidence suggests that household floors may be an important domain for the transmission of enteric and parasitic infections. However, little work has been done to investigate how household floors can become contaminated with human and animal faeces. This study uses a mixed methods approach to postulate the proximal and distal determinants of household floor contamination with faeces in groups of rural villages in 3 counties in Kenya (Bungoma, Kwale and Narok).

Investigating the genetic control of plant development in spring barley under speed breeding conditions.

This study found that the genes, PPD-H1 and ELF3, control the acceleration of plant development under speed breeding, with important implications for optimizing the delivery of climate-resilient crops. Speed breeding is a tool to accelerate breeding and research programmes. Despite its success and growing popularity with breeders, the genetic basis of plant development under speed breeding remains unknown.

Exploring factors associated with infection in school children in a high-transmission setting in Kenya.

Objectives: Kenya has implemented a national school-based deworming program, which has led to substantial decline in the prevalence of soil-transmitted helminths (STHs), although some pockets of infections remain. To effectively design an STH control program that leads to significant reductions of there is a need to understand the drivers of persistent infection despite ongoing treatment programs.

Methods: This study was conducted between July and September 2019 at the south coast of Kenya, using a two-stage sampling design.

WRKY48 negatively regulates plant acclimation to a combination of high light and heat stress.

Plants growing under natural conditions experience high light (HL) intensities that are often accompanied by elevated temperatures. These conditions could affect photosynthesis, reduce yield, and negatively impact agricultural productivity. The combination of different abiotic challenges creates a new type of stress for plants by generating complex environmental conditions that often exceed the impact of their individual parts.

Remote evaluation of STH program coverage: Experiences from the DeWorm3 study, India.

Background: The DeWorm3 trial is a multi-country study testing the feasibility of interrupting transmission of soil-transmitted helminths by community-wide mass drug administration (cMDA). Treatment coverage during cMDA delivery was validated by in-person coverage evaluation surveys (CES) after each round of treatment. A mobile phone-based CES was carried out in India when access to households was restricted during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Representativeness of a mobile phone-based coverage evaluation survey following mass drug administration for soil-transmitted helminths: a comparison of participation between two cross-sectional surveys.

Objectives: With increasing mobile phone subscriptions, phone-based surveys are gaining popularity with public health programmes. Despite advantages, systematic exclusion of participants may limit representativeness. Similar to control programmes for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), the DeWorm3 trial of biannual community-wide mass drug administration (MDA) for elimination of soil-transmitted helminth infection used in-person coverage evaluation surveys to measure the proportion of the at-risk population treated during MDA.

25 Years of thermomorphogenesis research: milestones and perspectives.

In 1998, Bill Gray and colleagues showed that warm temperatures trigger arabidopsis hypocotyl elongation in an auxin-dependent manner. This laid the foundation for a vibrant research discipline. With several active members of the 'thermomorphogenesis' community, we here reflect on 25 years of elevated ambient temperature research and look to the future.

The synergetic effect from the combination of different adsorption resins in batch and semi-continuous cultivations of S. Cerevisiae cell factories to produce acetylated Taxanes precursors of the anticancer drug Taxol.

In situ product recovery is an efficient way to intensify bioprocesses as it can perform adsorption of the desired natural products in the cultivation. However, it is common to use only one adsorbent (liquid or solid) to perform the product recovery. For this study, the use of an in situ product recovery method with three combined commercial resins (HP-20, XAD7HP, and HP-2MG) with different chemical properties was performed.

Effectiveness of community-based burden estimation to achieve elimination of lymphatic filariasis: A comparative cross-sectional investigation in Côte d'Ivoire.

For lymphatic filariasis (LF) elimination, endemic countries must document the burden of LF morbidity (LFM). Community-based screening (CBS) is used to collect morbidity data, but evidence demonstrating its reliability is limited. Recent pilots of CBS for LFM alongside mass drug administration (MDA) in Côte d'Ivoire suggested low LFM prevalence (2.

Differential contributions of phosphotransferases CEPT1 and CHPT1 to phosphatidylcholine homeostasis and lipid droplet biogenesis.

The cytidine diphosphate-choline (Kennedy) pathway culminates with the synthesis of phosphatidylcholine (PC) and phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) by choline/ethanolamine phosphotransferase 1 (CEPT1) in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and PC synthesis by choline phosphotransferase 1 (CHPT1) in the Golgi apparatus. Whether the PC and PE synthesized by CEPT1 and CHPT1 in the ER and Golgi apparatus has different cellular functions has not been formally addressed. Here, we used CRISPR editing to generate CEPT1-and CHPT1-KO U2OS cells to assess the differential contribution of the enzymes to feedback regulation of nuclear CTP:phosphocholine cytidylyltransferase (CCT)α, the rate-limiting enzyme in PC synthesis, and lipid droplet (LD) biogenesis.

Risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection in primary and secondary school students and staff in England in the 2020/2021 school year: a longitudinal study.

Objectives: Investigate risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 infections in school students and staff.

Methods: In the 2020/2021 school year, we administered polymerase chain reaction, antibody tests, and questionnaires to a sample of primary and secondary school students and staff, with data linkage to COVID-19 surveillance. We fitted logistic regression models to identify the factors associated with infection.

Implementation of COVID-19 Preventive Measures and Staff Well-Being in a Sample of English Schools 2020-2021.

Background: We examined fidelity and feasibility of implementation of COVID-19 preventive measures in schools, and explored associations between adherence to these measures and staff well-being, to inform policy on sustainable implementation and staff wellbeing.

Methods: Surveys were conducted across 128 schools in England with 107 headteachers and 2698 staff-members with reference to autumn term 2020, examining school-level implementation of preventive measures, adherence, and teacher burnout (response rates for headteacher and staff surveys were 84% and 59%, respectively).

Results: The median number of measures implemented in primary and secondary schools was 33 (range 23-41), and 32 (range 22-40), respectively; most measures presented challenges.

Epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection among staff and students in a cohort of English primary and secondary schools during 2020-2021.

Background: There remains uncertainty about the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 among school students and staff and the extent to which non-pharmaceutical-interventions reduce the risk of school settings.

Methods: We conducted an open cohort study in a sample of 59 primary and 97 secondary schools in 15 English local authority areas that were implementing government guidance to schools open during the pandemic. We estimated SARS-CoV-2 infection prevalence among those attending school, antibody prevalence, and antibody negative to positive conversion rates in staff and students over the school year (November 2020-July 2021).

Quantifying Population Burden and Effectiveness of Decentralized Surveillance Strategies for Skin-Presenting Neglected Tropical Diseases, Liberia.

We evaluated programmatic approaches for skin neglected tropical disease (NTD) surveillance and completed a robust estimation of the burden of skin NTDs endemic to West Africa (Buruli ulcer, leprosy, lymphatic filariasis morbidity, and yaws). In Maryland, Liberia, exhaustive case finding by community health workers of 56,285 persons across 92 clusters identified 3,241 suspected cases. A total of 236 skin NTDs (34.

Diagnostics: a major priority for the NHS.

Diagnostic capacity in the NHS in England was much lower than that in many other developed countries before the COVID-19 pandemic. The relative lack of diagnostic equipment and workforce is now hampering recovery from the pandemic. In response to this, a major programme of work is now underway to improve access to a wide range of diagnostic tests.