ImpENSA eHealthy Conversation Skills training for healthcare professionals aimed at improving micronutrient status during the first 1000 days in South Africa.

Individuals' lifestyle behaviours determine health. Improving Early Nutrition and Health in South Africa ("ImpENSA"), an EU Erasmus+ co-funded project, aims to tackle the triple burden of malnutrition in South Africa through equipping healthcare professionals (HCPs) with knowledge and skills to effectively support healthy nutritional choices among pregnant women and mothers/infant caregivers. Healthy Conversation Skills (HCS) is a behaviour change intervention utilising open discovery questions, active listening, reflection on practice and goal-setting support through SMARTER (Specific, Measured, Action-oriented, Realistic, Timed, Evaluated and Reviewed) planning as core competences.

The impact of probiotics on core autism symptoms - A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials.

Background & Aims: Studies have shown evidence of gut dysbiosis in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Various microbiome-modifying treatments, including probiotics, have been proposed. This review systematically assessed the evidence on the effects of probiotics on core autism symptoms in children with ASD.

Probiotics and Antibiotic-Induced Microbial Aberrations in Children: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Probiotics are often considered in children to prevent antibiotic-associated diarrhea. However, the underlying mechanistic effects and impact of probiotics on antibiotic-induced microbiota changes are not well understood.

Objective: To investigate the effects of a multispecies probiotic on the gut microbiota composition in children receiving antibiotics.

Systematic review: effect of probiotics on antibiotic-induced microbiome disruption.

The effectiveness of probiotics in preventing or reversing antibiotic-induced microbiome disruption remains uncertain, and claims of microbiome restoration to its pre-antibiotic state may be overestimated. In this review, we aimed to assess the efficacy of probiotics in preventing or ameliorating disruptions in microbiome composition and function induced by antibiotic treatment. We searched Medline, Embase, and CENTRAL for randomised controlled and non-randomised trials.

Evaluation of ImpENSA technology-enabled behaviour change module delivered to healthcare professionals in South Africa to improve micronutrient nutrition during the first 1000 days.

Healthcare professionals (HCPs) have vital roles in providing evidence-based care to promote healthy micronutrient nutrition in early life. Providing such care requires scalable training to strengthen knowledge and confident application of effective behaviour change skills. Among 33 public and private HCPs (primarily dietitians) in South Africa, we evaluated the behaviour change aspects of a technology-enabled National Qualification Sub-Framework level 6 programme, Improving Early Nutrition and Health in South Africa ('ImpENSA').

Point-of-care ultrasound to assess degree of dehydration in children: a systematic review with meta-analysis.

Background: There is no perfect method to assess level of dehydration in children. There are studies with conflicting results, where point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) measurement of diameter ratio of the inferior vena cava to the aorta (IVC/Ao) was used to predict degree of dehydration.

Objective: To systematically review the diagnostic accuracy of POCUS measurement of IVC/Ao ratio in predicting dehydration in children.

Risk of Gastroenteritis from Swimming at a Wastewater-Impacted Tropical Beach Varies across Localized Scales.

Population growth and changing climate are expected to increase human exposure to pathogens in tropical coastal waters. We examined microbiological water quality in three rivers within 2.3 km of each other that impact a Costa Rican beach and in the ocean outside their plumes during the rainy and dry seasons.

Strain-Specificity of Probiotics in Pediatrics: A Rapid Review of the Clinical Evidence.

Objective: The dogma of probiotic strain-specificity is widely accepted. However, only the genus- and species-specific effects of probiotics are supported by evidence from clinical trials. The aim of this rapid review was to assess clinical evidence supporting the claim that the efficacy of probiotics in the pediatric population is strain-specific.

Multispecies Probiotic for the Prevention of Antibiotic-Associated Diarrhea in Children: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: The efficacy of multispecies probiotic formulations in the prevention of antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD) remains unclear.

Objective: To assess the effect of a multispecies probiotic on the risk of AAD in children.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This randomized, quadruple-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted from February 2018 to May 2021 in a multicenter, mixed setting (inpatients and outpatients).

The SπRIT time projection chamber.

The Superconducting Analyzer for MUlti-particles from RAdioIsotope (SAMURAI) Pion-Reconstruction and Ion-Tracker Time Projection Chamber (SπRIT TPC) was designed to enable measurements of heavy ion collisions with the SAMURAI spectrometer at the RIKEN radioactive isotope beam factory and provides constraints on the equation of state of neutron-rich nuclear matter. The SπRIT TPC has a 50.5 cm drift length and an 86.

Probing the Symmetry Energy with the Spectral Pion Ratio.

Many neutron star properties, such as the proton fraction, reflect the symmetry energy contributions to the equation of state that dominate when neutron and proton densities differ strongly. To constrain these contributions at suprasaturation densities, we measure the spectra of charged pions produced by colliding rare isotope tin (Sn) beams with isotopically enriched Sn targets. Using ratios of the charged pion spectra measured at high transverse momenta, we deduce the slope of the symmetry energy to be 42 View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Relationships among microbial indicators of fecal pollution, microbial source tracking markers, and pathogens in Costa Rican coastal waters.

Tropical coastal waters are understudied, despite their ecological and economic importance. They also reflect projected climate change scenarios for other climate zones, e.g.

Probiotics for the prevention of antibiotic-associated adverse events in children-A scoping review to inform development of a core outcome set.

Introduction: Routine use of probiotics during antibiotic therapy in children remains a subject of discussion. To facilitate synthesis of individual study results and guideline formulation, it is important to assess predefined, similar, and clinically important outcomes. Core outcome sets are a proposed solution for this issue.

Early Life Exposure to Antibiotics and Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Systematic Review.

We systematically reviewed evidence from observational studies on the associations between autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and early-life antibiotic exposure. Eleven articles were included in the review. Prenatal antibiotic exposure was associated with a slightly increased risk of ASD in two cohort studies on overlapping populations and in one case-control study; in three other case-control studies, no significant association was found.

Effect of a multispecies probiotic on reducing the incidence of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea in children: a protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

Introduction: Certain individual probiotic strains have been proven to be effective in reducing the risk of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea (AAD). However, the effects of using multispecies probiotics (MPs) remain unclear. We aim to assess the effectiveness of a specific MP preparation (Winclove 612) in reducing the incidence of AAD in children.

Rapid review shows that probiotics and fermented infant formulas do not cause d-lactic acidosis in healthy children.

Aim: Extensive ongoing research on probiotics and infant formulas raises a number of safety questions. One concern is the potential influence of d-lactic acid-containing preparations on the health of infants and children. The aim of this review was to summarise the available knowledge on the ingestion of d-lactic acid-producing bacteria, acidified infant formulas and fermented infant formulas as a potential cause of paediatric d-lactic acidosis.

Gluten- and casein-free diet and autism spectrum disorders in children: a systematic review.

Purpose: Effective treatments for core symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are lacking. We systematically updated evidence on the effectiveness of a gluten-free and casein-free (GFCF) diet as a treatment for ASD in children.

Methods: The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, and EMBASE databases were searched up until August 2016, for randomized controlled trials (RCTs); additional references were obtained from reviewed articles.

ω-3 Fatty Acid Supplementation Does Not Affect Autism Spectrum Disorder in Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Effective treatments for the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are still lacking. We aimed to update the data on the effectiveness of ω-3 (n-3) fatty acid (FA) supplementation as a treatment for ASD. The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, and EMBASE databases were systematically searched up until August 2016 with no language restrictions for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing ω-3 FA supplementation with placebo or with no supplementation.

Quantification of Protozoa and Viruses from Small Water Volumes.

Large sample volumes are traditionally required for the analysis of waterborne pathogens. The need for large volumes greatly limits the number of samples that can be processed. The aims of this study were to compare extraction and detection procedures for quantifying protozoan parasites and viruses from small volumes of marine water.

Mean corpuscular volume of control red blood cells determines the interpretation of eosin-5'-maleimide (EMA) test result in infants aged less than 6 months.

Eosin-5'-maleimide (EMA) binding test is a flow cytometric test used to detect hereditary spherocytosis (HS). To perform the test sample from patients, 5-6 reference samples of red blood are needed. Our aim was to investigate how the mean corpuscular volume (MCV) of red blood cells influences on the value of fluorescence of bounded EMA dye and how the choice of reference samples affects the test result.

Reduction of nutrients, microbes, and personal care products in domestic wastewater by a benchtop electrocoagulation unit.

To preserve environmental and human health, improved treatment processes are needed to reduce nutrients, microbes, and emerging chemical contaminants from domestic wastewater prior to discharge into the environment. Electrocoagulation (EC) treatment is increasingly used to treat industrial wastewater; however, this technology has not yet been thoroughly assessed for its potential to reduce concentrations of nutrients, a variety of microbial surrogates, and personal care products found in domestic wastewater. This investigation's objective was to determine the efficiency of a benchtop EC unit with aluminum sacrificial electrodes to reduce concentrations of the aforementioned biological and chemical pollutants from raw and tertiary-treated domestic wastewater.

A case study of enteric virus removal and insights into the associated risk of water reuse for two wastewater treatment pond systems in Bolivia.

Wastewater treatment ponds (WTP) are one of the most widespread treatment technologies in the world; however, the mechanisms and extent of enteric virus removal in these systems are poorly understood. Two WTP systems in Bolivia, with similar overall hydraulic retention times but different first stages of treatment, were analyzed for enteric virus removal. One system consisted of a facultative pond followed by two maturation ponds (three-pond system) and the other consisted of an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor followed by two maturation (polishing) ponds (UASB-pond system).

Assessment of sources of human pathogens and fecal contamination in a Florida freshwater lake.

We investigated the potential for a variety of environmental reservoirs to harbor or contribute fecal indicator bacteria (FIB), DNA markers of human fecal contamination, and human pathogens to a freshwater lake. We hypothesized that submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), sediments, and stormwater act as reservoirs and/or provide inputs of FIB and human pathogens to this inland water. Analysis included microbial source tracking (MST) markers of sewage contamination (Enterococcus faecium esp gene, human-associated Bacteroides HF183, and human polyomaviruses), pathogens (Salmonella, Cryptosporidium, Giardia, and enteric viruses), and FIB (fecal coliforms, Escherichia coli, and enterococci).