Viruses
January 2025
Detection and quantification of disease-related biomarkers in wastewater samples, denominated Wastewater-based Surveillance (WBS), has proven a valuable strategy for studying the prevalence of infectious diseases within populations in a time- and resource-efficient manner, as wastewater samples are representative of all cases within the catchment area, whether they are clinically reported or not. However, analysis and interpretation of WBS datasets for decision-making during public health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, remains an area of opportunity. In this article, a database obtained from wastewater sampling at wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and university campuses in Monterrey and Mexico City between 2021 and 2022 was used to train simple clustering- and regression-based risk assessment models to allow for informed prevention and control measures in high-affluence facilities, even if working with low-dimensionality datasets and a limited number of observations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Wastewater-based surveillance applied to SARS-CoV-2 viral load quantification for COVID-19 has become one of the most relevant complementary tools in epidemiologic prevention programs worldwide. However, this valuable decision-making tool still requires fine-tuning to produce comparable results between laboratories, especially when applied to the surveillance of megacities.
Methods: Six laboratories across Mexico and one from the United States executed an interlaboratory study to set up a singular standardized protocol considering method cost, installed infrastructure, materials available, and supply availability for SARS-CoV-2 quantification from five Mexico City sampling sites across this megacity.
Nowadays, the need to track fast-spreading infectious diseases has raised due to the recent COVID-19 disease pandemic. As a response, Wastewater-based Surveillance (WBS) has emerged as an early detection and disease tracking method for large populations that enables a comprehensive overview of public health allowing for a faster response from public health sector to prevent large outbreaks. The process to achieve WBS requires a highly intensive sampling strategy with either expensive equipment or trained personnel to continuously sample.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVideo games (VGs) are one of the most common forms of entertainment and their diffusion is constantly increasing. Although largely studied in the framework of their relationship with mental and physical health, the relationship of VGs with sleep are not yet fully understood. This review provides a systematic assessment of the studies that investigated the relationships between video gaming and sleep in adults.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPositive symptoms of schizophrenia have been proposed to be an intrusion of dreaming in wakefulness; conversely, psychotic patients' abnormal cognitive and behavioral features could overflow into sleep, so that their dreams would differ from those of healthy people. Here we assess this hypothesis by comparing dream features of 46 patients affected by schizophrenic spectrum disorders to those of 28 healthy controls. In patients, we also investigated correlations of dream variables with symptom severity and verbal fluency.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Evaluate the safety profile of expanded allogeneic adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cell (eASC) for the treatment of severe community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP).
Materials And Methods: Randomized, multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 1b/2a trial. Patients with severe CABP were enrolled to receive intravenous infusions of Cx611 or placebo.
Food and waterborne illnesses are still a major concern in health and food safety areas. Every year, almost 0.42 million and 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough wastewater-based surveillance (WBS) is an efficient community-wide surveillance tool, its implementation for pathogen surveillance remains limited by ineffective sample treatment procedures, as the complex composition of wastewater often interferes with biomarker recovery. Moreover, current sampling protocols based on grab samples are susceptible to fluctuant biomarker concentrations and may increase operative costs, often rendering such systems inaccessible to communities in low-to-middle-income countries (LMICs). As a response, passive samplers have emerged as a way to make wastewater sampling more efficient and obtain more reliable, consistent data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFalse memories are a possible by-product of sleep-related memory consolidation processes when delayed testing is performed after a retention interval spent asleep. To date, the effect of a retention period spent asleep or awake on false memories formation has been addressed only in healthy subjects, while neglecting sleep-disordered populations. In the present study, we investigated this effect in 17 insomniacs and 15 good sleepers through the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch on the effects of videogames (VGs) on health has produced mixed results. Here, we assess the relationships of VG playing with sleep; chronotype; sleepiness; and levels of depression, anxiety, and stress; and how they are modulated by the level of exposure to VGs. Four hundred-and two adult participants (age = 26.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
January 2023
The possibility of distinguishing insomniacs from good sleepers based on polysomnography (PSG) remains an open question. While these groups show modest differences in traditional PSG parameters, some studies suggest that finer measures may be more useful. Here we assess differences between good sleepers (GS), poor sleepers (PS) and insomniacs (IN) in classical PSG measures as well as in sleep continuity, stability and cyclic organization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Individual differences in attachment insecurity can have important implications for experiences of positive emotions. However, existing research on the link between attachment insecurity and positive emotional experiences has typically used a composite measure of positive emotions, overlooking the potential importance of differentiating discrete emotions.
Method: We conducted a meta-analysis of 10 cross-sectional samples (N = 3215), examining how attachment insecurity is associated with self-reported frequency of experiencing positive emotions, with a distinction made between more social (i.
Background: In insomnia, poor sleep is accompanied by several cognitive impairments affecting prefrontal functioning that could affect source-monitoring processes and contribute to false memories production. By using a modified version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (DRM), we previously found that individuals suffering from insomnia produced more false memories than good sleepers adopting a free-recall task, especially for sleep-related stimuli. However, whether poor sleep affects false memory production in a task-dependent manner (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFructooligosaccharides (FOS) are usually synthesized with pure enzymes using highly concentrated sucrose solutions. In this work, low-cost aguamiel and molasses were explored as sucrose alternatives to produce FOS, via whole-cell fermentation, with an DIA-MF strain. FOS production process was optimized through a central composite experimental design, with two independent variables: initial sucrose concentration in a medium composed of aguamiel and molasses (AgMe), and inoculum concentration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
December 2021
Several studies show that pre-sleep learning determines changes in subsequent sleep, including improvements of sleep quality. Our aims were to confirm this finding using a more ecological task (learning a theatrical monologue) and to investigate whether the effect is modulated by expertise. Using a mixed design, we compared polysomnographic recordings of baseline sleep (BL, 9-h TIB) to those of post-training sleep (TR, with the same TIB but preceded by the training session), in one group of actors ( = 11) and one of non-actors ( = 11).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious studies suggest that sleep can influence false memories formation. Specifically, acute sleep loss has been shown to promote false memories production by impairing memory retrieval at subsequent testing. Surprisingly, the relationship between sleep and false memories has only been investigated in healthy subjects but not in individuals with insomnia, whose sleep is objectively impaired compared to healthy subjects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudies on sleep during the Covid-19 pandemic have mostly been conducted during the first wave of contagion (spring 2020). To follow up on two Italian studies addressing subjective sleep features during the second wave (autumn 2020), here we assess sleep during the third wave (spring 2021) in a sample of healthy adults from Campania (Southern Italy). Actigraphic data (on 2 nights) and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index were collected from 82 participants (40 F, mean age: 32.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrevious work showed a significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Italians' sleep both during the first wave, when a total lockdown (TL) was imposed, and during the second wave, when a partial lockdown (PL) was mandated (autumn 2020). Here we complement these data by describing the profile of sleep across four time-points: the first and second lockdown (TL, PL) and the months preceding them (pre-TL, pre-PL). An online survey was completed by 214 participants (M = 36.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough the issue has been repeatedly explored, data on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children's sleep quality are inconsistent. To clarify these discrepancies, here we investigate possible age-related differences. During the lockdown, 112 parents of toddlers (0-3 years, N = 61) and pre-schoolers (4-5 years, = 51) completed an online survey including the Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch during the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted its significant impact on dreaming. Here we address changes in dream features both during the first wave, when the Italian government imposed a total lockdown, and the second wave (autumn 2020), when a partial lockdown was effected. In April 2020 (total lockdown), 1,622 participants (M = 34.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
January 2021
Italy and Belgium have been among the first western countries to face the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emergency, imposing a total lockdown over the entire national territories. These limitations have proven effective in slowing down the spread of the infection. However, the benefits obtained in public health have come with huge costs in terms of social, economic, and psychological well-being.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP) can lead to sepsis and is associated with high mortality rates in patients presenting with shock and/or respiratory failure and who require mechanical ventilation and admission to intensive care units, thus reflecting the limited effectiveness of current therapy. Preclinical studies support the efficacy of expanded allogeneic adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (eASCs) in the treatment of sepsis. In this study, we aim to test the safety, tolerability and efficacy of eASCs as adjunctive therapy in patients with severe CABP (sCABP).
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