Comparative study of biofilm formation on biocidal antifouling and fouling-release coatings using next-generation DNA sequencing.

The bacterial and eukaryotic communities forming biofilms on six different antifouling coatings, three biocidal and three fouling-release, on boards statically submerged in a marine environment were studied using next-generation sequencing. Sequenced amplicons of bacterial 16S ribosomal DNA and eukaryotic ribosomal DNA internal transcribed spacer were assigned taxonomy by comparison to reference databases and relative abundances were calculated. Differences in species composition, bacterial and eukaryotic, and relative abundance were observed between the biofilms on the various coatings; the main difference was between coating type, biocidal compared to fouling-release.

Good outcome of total hip replacement in patients with cerebral palsy: A comparison of 389 patients and 425,813 controls from the National Joint Registry for England and Wales.

Background And Purpose: People with cerebral palsy (CP) often have painful deformed hips, but they are seldom treated with hip replacement as the surgery is considered to be high risk. However, few data are available on the outcome of hip replacement in these patients.

Patients And Methods: We linked Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) records to the National Joint Registry for England and Wales to identify 389 patients with CP who had undergone hip replacement.

Population density profiles of nasopharyngeal carriage of 5 bacterial species in pre-school children measured using quantitative PCR offer potential insights into the dynamics of transmission.

Bacterial vaccines can reduce carriage rates. Colonization is usually a binary endpoint. Real time quantitative PCR (qPCR) can quantify bacterial DNA in mucosal samples over a wide range.

How growth hormone may be linked to cancer: concerns and perspective.

Recent evidence from epidemiology indicates that inter-individual variations in the growth hormone (GH)/IGF-I pathway affect the risk of individuals developing common epithelial cancers. This is supported by associations between normal common variants within genes from the pathway and these cancers, which excludes many potential confounding issues, such as reverse causality. This raises concern for the increasing numbers of patients treated with GH; although replacement therapy for GH-deficiency should aim to restore normality, which should then only incur a normal risk.