Integrating the milk microbiome signatures in mastitis: milk-omics and functional implications.

Mammalian milk contains a variety of complex bioactive and nutritional components and microorganisms. These microorganisms have diverse compositions and functional roles that impact host health and disease pathophysiology, especially mastitis. The advent and use of high throughput omics technologies, including metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, metametabolomics, as well as culturomics in milk microbiome studies suggest strong relationships between host phenotype and milk microbiome signatures in mastitis.

Bacteriocins: potentials and prospects in health and agrifood systems.

Bacteriocins are highly diverse, abundant, and heterogeneous antimicrobial peptides that are ribosomally synthesized by bacteria and archaea. Since their discovery about a century ago, there has been a growing interest in bacteriocin research and applications. This is mainly due to their high antimicrobial properties, narrow or broad spectrum of activity, specificity, low cytotoxicity, and stability.

Erratum: Universal drivers of cheese microbiomes.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.

The biomechanics of wounds at physiologically relevant levels: Understanding skin's stress-shielding effect for the quantitative assessment of healing.

Wounds are responsible for the decrease in quality of life of billions of people around the world. Their assessment relies on subjective parameters which often delays optimal treatments and results in increased healthcare costs. In this work, we sought to understand and quantify how wounds at different healing stages (days 1, 3, 7 and 14 post wounding) change the mechanical properties of the tissues that contain them, and how these could be measured at clinically relevant strain levels, as a step towards quantitative wound tracking technologies.

Antimicrobial use and resistance in food animal production: food safety and associated concerns in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The use of antimicrobials in food animal (FA) production is a common practice all over the world, with even greater usage and dependence in the developing world, including Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, this practice which serves obvious economic benefits to producers has raised public health concerns over the last decades, thus driving the selection and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance and adversely impacting food safety and environmental health. This review presents the current and comprehensive antimicrobial usage practices in food animal production across SSA.

Nasal staphylococci microbiota and resistome in healthy adults in La Rioja, northern Spain: High frequency of toxigenic S. aureus and MSSA-CC398 subclade.

This study determined the nasal staphylococci diversity and characterized their resistome, with a focus on the mobilome of methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA)-CC398 subclade from healthy adults in La Rioja (northern Spain). Nasal staphylococci recovered from 57 healthy individuals (HI) were identified (MALDI-TOF-MS) and their antimicrobial resistance, virulence determinants and genetic lineages were studied. The relatedness of MSSA-CC398 isolates was assessed by core-genome single-nucleotide-polymorphisms (SNPs).

Effect of dietary onion (Allium cepa L.) powder as an antioxidant on semen quality, blood biochemicals, and reproductive parameters, as well as immunological variables of rabbit bucks under severe heat stress.

This study aimed to evaluate the antioxidant effects of onion (Allium cepa L.) powder on the immunological variables, redox state, and semen quality of rabbit bucks exposed to severe heat stress. Thirty-six mature bucks (7 months old) were divided into three groups consisting of 12 bucks each, namely group I, control; group II, 400 mg onion powder/kg diet; and group III, 800 mg onion powder/kg diet.

Disturbed sleep is associated with reduced verbal episodic memory and entorhinal cortex volume in younger middle-aged women with risk-reducing early ovarian removal.

Introduction: Women with early ovarian removal (<48 years) have an elevated risk for both late-life Alzheimer's disease (AD) and insomnia, a modifiable risk factor. In early midlife, they also show reduced verbal episodic memory and hippocampal volume. Whether these reductions correlate with a sleep phenotype consistent with insomnia risk remains unexplored.

Prevalence of blood stream infections and associated factors among febrile neutropenic cancer patients on chemotherapy at Ocean Road Cancer Institute, Tanzania.

Background: Febrile Neutropenia (FN) caused by bacteria in cancer patients is associated with poor prognosis. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of FN and associated factors among cancer patients on chemotherapy at Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI), Tanzania.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from June to September 2019.

COVID-19 alters human microbiomes: a meta-analysis.

Introduction: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected a substantial portion of the world's population, and novel consequences of COVID-19 on the human body are continuously being uncovered. The human microbiome plays an essential role in host health and well-being, and multiple studies targeting specific populations have reported altered microbiomes in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2. Given the global scale and massive incidence of COVID on the global population, determining whether the effects of COVID-19 on the human microbiome are consistent and generalizable across populations is essential.

Computational homogenization of histological microstructures in human prostate tissue: Heterogeneity, anisotropy and tension-compression asymmetry.

Human prostatic tissue exhibits complex mechanical behaviour due to its multiphasic, heterogeneous nature, with hierarchical microstructures involving epithelial compartments, acinar lumens and stromal tissue all interconnected in complex networks. This study aims to establish a computational homogenization framework for quantifying the mechanical behaviour of prostate tissue, considering its multiphasic heterogeneous microstructures and the mechanical characteristics of tissue constituents. Representative tissue microstructure models were reconstructed from high-resolution histology images.

Women's Brain Health: Midlife Ovarian Removal Affects Associative Memory.

Women with early bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO; removal of ovaries and fallopian tubes) have greater Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk than women in spontaneous/natural menopause (SM), but early biomarkers of this risk are not well-characterized. Considering associative memory deficits may presage preclinical AD, we wondered if one of the earliest changes might be in associative memory and whether younger women with BSO had changes similar to those observed in SM. Women with BSO (with and without 17β-estradiol replacement therapy (ERT)), their age-matched premenopausal controls (AMC), and older women in SM completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging face-name associative memory task shown to predict early AD.

Comprehensive Approaches for the Search and Characterization of Staphylococcins.

Novel and sustainable approaches are required to curb the increasing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Within the last decades, antimicrobial peptides, especially bacteriocins, have received increased attention and are being explored as suitable alternatives to antibiotics. Bacteriocins are ribosomally synthesized antimicrobial peptides produced by bacteria as a self-preservation method against competitors.

Mechanical mapping of the prostate in vivo using Dynamic Instrumented Palpation; towards an in vivo strategy for cancer assessment.

A calibrated palpation sensor has been developed for making instrumented Digital Rectal Examinations (iDREs) with a view to assessing patients for prostate cancer. The instrument measures the dynamic stiffness of the palpable surface of the prostate, and has been trialled on 12 patients in vivo. The patients had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and were scheduled for radical prostatectomy.

Marburg virus disease: the paradox of Nigeria's preparedness and priority effects in co-epidemics.

Background: The recent outbreaks of Marburg virus disease (MVD) in Guinea and Ghana have become a major public health concern not only to the West African sub-region but a threat to global health.

Main Body Of The Abstract: Given the poorly elucidated ecological and epidemiological dynamics of the Marburg virus, it would be imprudent to preclude the possibility of another pandemic if urgent efforts are not put in place. However, the prior emergence and impact of COVID-19 and other co-occurring epidemics may add 'noise' to the epidemiological dynamics and public health interventions that may be required in the advent of a MVD outbreak in Nigeria.

Universal drivers of cheese microbiomes.

The culinary value, quality, and safety of cheese are largely driven by the resident bacteria, but comparative analyses of the cheese microbiota across cheese types are scarce. We present the first global synthesis of cheese microbiomes. Following a systematic literature review of cheese microbiology research, we collected 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequence data from 824 cheese samples spanning 58 cheese types and 16 countries.

Genomic analysis and in vivo efficacy of Pediococcus acidilactici as a potential probiotic to prevent hyperglycemia, hypercholesterolemia and gastrointestinal infections.

Lactic acid bacteria are the well acknowledged probiotics that can cure a variety of diseases. In this study, we observed the in vivo potentials of Pediococcus to treat hyperglycemia, hypercholesterolemia and gastrointestinal infections. A total of 77 Lactobacillus were isolated from the milk of 10 cows and 10 goats, four of those strains inhibited both carbohydrates-hydrolyzing enzymes, α-glucosidase, and α-amylase.

Scene memory and hippocampal volume in middle-aged women with early hormone loss.

The present study explored whether early midlife bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO), a female-specific risk factor for dementia, is associated with reduced medial temporal lobe structure and function. Younger middle-aged women with the BRCA1/2 mutation and a BSO prior to spontaneous menopause (SM) were recruited. We determined the performance of women with BSO not taking estradiol-based hormone therapy (n = 18) on a task measuring object and scene recognition and quantified medial temporal lobe subregion volumes using manually segmented high-resolution T2-weighted MRI scans.

Locating and sizing tumor nodules in human prostate using instrumented probing - computational framework and experimental validation.

Detection of tumor nodules is key to early cancer diagnosis. This study investigates the potential of using the mechanical data, acquired from probing the prostate for detecting the existence, and, more importantly, characterizing the size and depth, from the posterior surface, of the prostate cancer (PCa) nodules. A computational approach is developed to quantify the uncertainty of nodule detectability and is based on identifying stiffness anomalies in the profiles of point force measurements across transverse sections of the prostate.

Novel mono- and multi-strain probiotics supplementation modulates growth, intestinal microflora composition and haemato-biochemical parameters in broiler chickens.

Background: The reduction of antimicrobial usage in food-producing animals necessitates the intense search for novel alternatives, including new probiotic strains with more effective properties in improving growth performance and curtailing diseases in animals.

Objective: This study evaluated the effects of novel mono- and multi-strain probiotics on the growth performance, intestinal microbiota and haemato-biochemical parameters of broilers.

Methods: A total of 160 one-day-old Cobb 500 broilers were divided into eight treatment groups with two replicates consisting of (1) basal diet (negative control), (2) basal diet with antibiotic, colistin sulphate, (3) basal diet with commercial probiotic, PROMAX® (positive control), (4) basal diet with Pediococcus acidilactici I5, (5) basal diet with P.

The deuce-ace of Lassa Fever, Ebola virus disease and COVID-19 simultaneous infections and epidemics in West Africa: clinical and public health implications.

Globally, the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented clinical and public health concerns with increasing morbidity and mortality. Unfortunately, the burden of COVID-19 in Africa has been further exacerbated by the simultaneous epidemics of Ebola virus disease (EVD) and Lassa Fever (LF) which has created a huge burden on African healthcare systems. As Africa struggles to contain the spread of the second (and third) waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of reported cases of LF is also increasing, and recently, new outbreaks of EVD.